US: Foreign Assistance Dashboard Update

Foreign Assistance Dashboard Update

Media Note

Office of the Spokesperson

Washington, DC

May 20, 2013

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard (www.foreignassistance.gov), a key deliverable of the U.S. Government’s Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, promotes the Administration’s commitment to openness and transparency. The Dashboard serves as a dynamic tool to visualize foreign assistance data, and continues to expand with more robust datasets.

Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Quarter 2 obligation and expenditure data is now available on the Foreign Assistance Dashboard. In accordance with OMB Bulletin 12-01, agencies currently on the Foreign Assistance Dashboard are required to report data to the Dashboard on a quarterly basis. USAID and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) are the first agencies to provide timely quarterly FY13 obligation and expenditure data to the Dashboard. The USAID and MCC FY13 quarterly data is visualized in bar and pie charts and also included in the U.S. Government’s data files in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) format found here.

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard serves as a tool for users to access U.S. foreign assistance data by country, sector, and agency in an easy-to-understand format. The site provides a visual presentation of foreign assistance data in a standardized and user-friendly way. Data on the site can be manually queried, filtered, and downloaded by users for further analysis. The Dashboard has become the U.S. Government’s main tool for improving foreign aid transparency with over 480,000 visitors since its initial launch in December 2010.

The Dashboard continues to expand with the goal of including detailed foreign assistance budget, financial, and program data from all U.S. Government agencies that fund or implement foreign assistance in accordance with the OMB Bulletin 12-01. As new data is added to the Dashboard, the IATI data files will also be updated to reflect the new data set visualized on the site.

To understand the information presented in the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, users are encouraged to read the supplementary information under the What You Should Know section of the website. Comments, questions, or suggestions can be submitted through the Contact Us form on the site.

ENDS

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