Why open data?

In its international development cooperation, the Netherlands works with a broad range of development partners, including other donors, governments of recipient countries, civil society organisations, knowledge institutions and the private sector.

Transparency about what we do and how we cooperate with our partners is crucial. In order to improve transparency, the Netherlands has decided to use open data to gather knowledge and to monitor and enhance our development efforts.

We envisage that in doing so several ambitions will come together.

  • We want to improve the way we communicate with the public, stakeholders and political decision-makers about what we do.
  • We want to enhance transparency in the chain and open up networks in the development sector, looking at who achieves what with the support we provide. We want to create insight into the development initiatives the ministry supports, as well as the network of parties involved and their respective roles.
  • We want to ensure that decision-making on our strategies, learning and monitoring is more data driven and data informed and focused on enhancing impact.

The transition towards open data requires that information be made available in a format that can be published and accessed by all partners. The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) has defined an open data standard for development cooperation.