Making aid more effective in Nepal

Nepal is currently focusing on building transparent and accountable public institutions following a period of disruptive civil war. By 2013-14, foreign aid represented 22% of the national budget and financed most development spending. NGOs, journalists and civil society have demanded more comprehensive, timely and detailed information on aid flows, particularly geographic information, to show where money is being directed.

In June 2013, the Aid Management Platform was launched by the Ministry of Finance to assist efforts aimed at monitoring aid and budget spending. All NGOs are now required to report details about their funding and programmes to the platform, building on civil society- driven open data initiatives including Open Nepal’s open data portal, Aid Snapshot, and the Open Aid Partnership.

There have been positive indications of open data use: civil society organisations are using budget and aid-related data to produce analysis for policy reform; development agencies and NGOs use open government data for programme planning, monitoring and evaluation; and the Ministry of Finance uses open data to formulate the entire government’s budget, helping to trace gaps between spending and output.

View the report Supporting sustainable development with open data from The Open Data Institute.