Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network: Setting the Gold Standard for Transparency: The Opportunity for the New U.S. Development Finance Agency
Sally Paxton, U.S. representative for Publish What You Fund, and George Ingram, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-chair at MFAN, discuss the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (BUILD Act), which was signed into law on October 5, 2018, and the new U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (USIDFC) created under the legislation. They write, “There are lots of questions to answer and details to be addressed to ensure that the potential of this new initiative is best poised to meet the challenges of effectively using both its development mandate and its resources. … We want to call attention to one specific provision of the BUILD Act. As part of the transparency goals that underpin U.S. foreign assistance strategy, the law requires that the DFC publish its data at the project not country level. Although this is the norm globally for traditional aid, it is not common for [development finance institutions (DFIs)]. … Informed by the significant benefits of comparable, comprehensive, and accessible data and smart policy decisions, the USIDFC can be positioned to set the transparency gold standard…” (12/6).