Putting Aid Data to Work: Using better information to get better results
November 4, 2011
Speaker Profiles and Presentations
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Introduction: Jean-Louis Sarbib
Keynote Speaker: Richard Manning
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Richard Manning is an independent development consultant. He is Chair of the Board of the Institute of Development Studies, Vice-Chair of the Board of the BBC World Service Trust, and a Senior Research Associate of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford. He worked for the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and its predecessor agencies from 1965-2003, and was a Director-General from 1996-2003. From 2003-2007 he was Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), and also co-Chair of the Steering Committee of PARIS21.
Opening Panel: Aid Transparency, Innovation, and the Open Data Movement
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Moderator: Catherine (Kate) Weaver
Kate Weaver is Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a core researcher in the Robert S. Strauss Center’s program on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS), a multiyear research project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Minerva Initiative. She leads the CCAPS project on tracking and geomapping climate aid flows to Africa.
Kate was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2001-2001 and received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. Dr. Weaver's research focuses on the culture, behavior and reform of international financial institutions, foremost the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as issues of transparency and accountability in international development aid. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, Dr. Weaver is the author of the award-winning Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform (Princeton University Press, 2008) and co-author of Theory and Practice of International Organizations (forthcoming, Rowman & Littlefield Press). She is also co-editor of International Political Economy: Debating the Past, Present and Future (Routledge Press, 2010) and The Handbook of Global Economic Governance (forthcoming, Routledge Press). Organizations. Dr. Weaver is currently co-editor of Review of International Political Economy and co-founder of the Alliance on Governance Research & Analysis (AGORA).
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Lindsay Coates serves as Executive Vice President for InterAction and heads the Policy and Communications Team, where she works to realize the goals of InterAction and the community of 192 nongovernmental organizations that it represents. From 2004-2008, Lindsay was the COO at Population Action International, a research and advocacy institute. Prior to her work in the NGO world, Lindsay practiced civil rights law in various capacities, among them Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Attorney and Officer at the National Gallery of Art.
Lindsay’s volunteer service has included the Obama administration’s Task Force on Global Poverty—run by the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships—and the Public Policy Committee of the Independent Sector. She has been a Trustee for her alma mater the University of the South at Sewanee and a Board Member for the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project, which provides legal services to low income citizens.
During the 2008-2009 academic year, Lindsay was a nonresident Fellow of Seminar XXI, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies, studying Foreign Politics, International Relations and the National Interest. She completed the Graduate Executive Leadership Development Program of Columbia University, holds a J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law, with Honors, and a B.A. (magna cum laude) in Political Science (focus on International Relations) from Sewanee. As an undergraduate, she did her junior year abroad at the London School of Economics.
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Sheila Herrling is Vice President for Policy and Evaluation at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. At MCC, she is responsible for managing MCC’s annual country eligibility process for compact and threshold programs; overseeing the development and implementation of MCC Threshold Programs; promoting effective policy improvement in MCC’s compact and threshold operations; managing the technical economic analysis and evaluation methods that underpins MCC’s engagement with partner countries, including the development and conduct of rigorous independent evaluations of MCC programs; managing MCC’s learning and results agenda by monitoring trends in global development policy and sharing lessons learned and best practices internally, internationally, and among USG agencies and other donors.
Before joining MCC, Ms. Herrling was Director at the Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent, nonprofit policy research organization that is dedicated to reducing global poverty and inequality and to making globalization work for the poor. At CGD, she was a founder of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network project—a broad based coalition of international development and foreign policy experts and advocates helping to reform the U.S. foreign assistance program. Sheila was as an advisor on President Obama’s transition team. Prior to CGD, she served in senior management positions at the U.S. Department of Treasury, including Deputy Director of the Office of Development Policy and Advisor to the U.S. Executive Director of the African Development Bank.
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Jean-Louis Sarbib is Chief Executive Officer of Development Gateway, Inc. He joined the board of the Development Gateway in 2004 and was elected chair in 2008. In March 2009, the board asked him to serve as chief executive officer.
Mr. Sarbib came to Development Gateway after a long career at the World Bank. Mr. Sarbib joined the World Bank in 1980 to work on Africa. During his 26 years at the World Bank, Mr. Sarbib held several senior level positions, including vice president for Africa and vice president for the Middle East and North Africa. In 2003, he was appointed to his last position as senior vice president for the Human Development Network, with global responsibilities for the World Bank activities in education, health, social protection, and HIV/AIDS.
A French national, Mr. Sarbib also serves on the boards of The Micronutrient Initiative, World Links for Development, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, The International Center for Conciliation, and FXB International. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adviser to James Wolfensohn, former President of the World Bank.
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Aleem Walji is the Practice Manager of World Bank Institute’s Innovation Team. He oversees the Development Marketplace program, which provides social entrepreneurs access to early stage, mezzanine, and growth financing for the delivery of public goods.
He also oversees ICT for Development projects focused on Open Government, Transparency and Accountability. As part of his role, Aleem leads efforts related to Innovation@Work including the Bank's competition management platform (or Innovation Radar) designed to surface solutions to complex development problems from within and outside the World Bank.
Prior to joining WBI, Aleem served as a Head of Global Development Initiatives at Google.org, with a focus on eastern Africa. He led efforts related to increasing transparency and accountability in government and supporting the growth of small and medium-size enterprises in Africa. Aleem was also the first CEO of the Aga Khan Foundation in Syria. His particular interests lie in rural economic development, entrepreneurship, and public-private partnerships. He completed his bachelor's degree in Near Eastern Studies and Anthropology from Emory University and his master's degree in International Development and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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David Wheeler is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he works on issues related to climate change, natural resource conservation, African infrastructure development, sustainable development indicators and the allocation of development aid. From 1993-2006, as a Lead Economist in the World Bank's Development Research Group, he directed a team that worked on environmental policy and research issues in collaboration with policymakers and academics in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Ghana and other developing countries. His team focused particularly on reducing pollution through public information disclosure, in collaboration with the environment ministries of China, Indonesia and the Philippines. He also worked on priority-setting for country lending, grants and technical assistance with the World Bank's Vice Presidency for Operations Policy and Country Services, the World Bank's Environment Department, and the Global Environment Facility. During his last two years at the Bank, he and his colleagues initiated a climate change program in the Development Research Group, as well as collaborating with the Bank's Africa Region on a cost-effective strategy for road network upgrading in Sub-Saharan Africa.
After completing his PhD in 1974, Wheeler taught economics for two years at the National University of Zaire in Kinshasa. He joined the economics faculty at Boston University in 1976, and taught there until he joined the World Bank in 1990. While on the BU faculty, he was a visiting professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (1978-79), a co-founder and principal of the Boston Institute for Developing Economies (1987-1990), and Jakarta field director of the Development Studies Project for BAPPENAS, Indonesia's Planning Ministry (1987-1989).
Opening Panel: Q&A
Session 1: Tracking Where, When, and How Aid Money is Spent
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Moderator: Stephen Davenport
Stephen Davenport is the Senior Director for Business Development, Innovation, and Partnerships at Development Gateway. In his work for over 10 years in the area of technology, aid management, and information transparency, Stephen has been at the forefront of the latest in cutting edge ICT4D innovations. With an emphasis on developing countries, his most recent achievements have focused on web- and mobile phone-based visualizations of aid flows, budget information, and results designed to empower developing country stakeholders to enforce resource efficiency and mutual accountability. His efforts have also led to contributions to international data standards such as the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
Prior to joining the organization in 2000, he worked with the World Bank, IBM, Computer Associates, and BearingPoint, developing technology solutions for the public and private sector. He holds a master's degree in international business administration from Georgetown University, and a bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University.
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Michael Findley
Dr. Michael Findley is a Political Scientist at Brigham Young University and Associate Director of BYU’s Political Economy and Development Lab. As a principal investigator on the AidData project, he has helped oversee the mapping of 65,000 foreign aid projects from AidData and has worked together with the World Bank, African Development Bank, and the Malawian Government to help map their development activities. More generally, his research examines civil wars, terrorism, foreign aid, and development, and has been published in the leading political science journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and British Journal of Political Science as well as leading interdisciplinary development journals, such as World Development.
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Björn-Sören GiglerPresentation
Björn-Sören Gigler
Björn-Sören Gigler is a Senior Governance Specialist at the Innovation Practice at the World Bank Institute. He is a political economist and since the end of the 1990s he has worked on issues related to innovative uses of information and communications technology (ICT) for development and empowerment. He currently coordinates the Mapping for Results initiative, which visualizes the location of donor-funded projects to better monitor project impact, improve aid effectiveness, and enhance transparency and social accountability.
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Hemang Karelia
Hemang brings over 10 years of post-disaster and post-conflict experience working with various UN agencies, governments and technology firms in Afghanistan, India, Sudan and Switzerland. He specializes in deploying technology tools for disaster risk management & development and currently leads the knowledge management initiatives of the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Recovery and Reduction (GFDRR). He also provides cross-cutting technical and strategic support to the World Bank’s disaster risk management teams and leads the Disaster Aid Tracking initiative which tracks global aid and investments in disaster risk reduction, recovery and reconstruction.
Session 1: Q&A
Session 2: Aid Transparency in Climate Change and Development
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Moderator: J. Timmons Roberts
Timmons Roberts is Director of the Center for Environmental Studies and Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Brown University. He taught at the College of William and Mary and directed its Program in Environmental Science and Policy (2001-2009), and he held a joint appointment in Latin American Studies and Sociology and co-directed the Environmental Studies program at Tulane University (1991-2001). He was a James Martin 21st Century Professor at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute in 2006-2007, and a Research Fellow at William and Mary's Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations in 2008-2009. His 1992 Ph.D. was from Johns Hopkins University in Sociology's Program in Comparative International Development. His B.A. was in Biology (with research in tropical and temperate ecology) from Kenyon College.
Timmons' interests in environmental science and policy are broad. His main current research concerns global inequality and climate change (in who is suffering most, who caused the problem, and who is taking action), and the role of foreign aid in addressing climate justice matters. His other work concerns both the political economy and the social psychology of environmental issues. He is leading work on adaptation strategies to deal with climate change in Rhode Island. Survey and case study work with workers, residents, and students has concerned perceptions of the environment and people's behaviors, and what might be needed to move us towards more environmentally sustainable action. Professor Roberts has worked for many years with students on greening initiatives and with community groups on issues such as environmental justice, sprawl, pedestrian accessibility, recycling, brownfields, and fear of exposures to hazards on the job and at home. He teaches environmental sociology, globalization and the environment, and practicum group workshop courses on environmental policy issues.
Panelists:
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Dr Thomas E. Downing is President and CEO of the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership (GCAP) and Director of GCAP (UK). He received his PhD in Geography from Clark University. Over his career he has held a number of influential positions, including Advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme and recently the Munich Re Foundation Chair for social vulnerability. In his 30 years of experience working in the field of adaptation and vulnerability he has led numerous projects, his most recent being the EC ClimateCost project. Before establishing GCAP, he was the Director of the Stockholm Environmental Institute’s Oxford office, where he managed a $2 million revenue base. Tom is an internationally recognised thought leader in adaptation and has published over 100 papers, books, reports and book reviews, including the Atlas of Climate Change (with Kirstin Dow). He is currently directing a project on an adaptation mainstreaming for the African Development Bank and has previously worked with the World Bank and Inter American Development Bank.
Some of his most recent projects include working for the African Development Bank in Tunisia from 2010 to present as the Project Director, the KfW Germany in India from 2010 to 2011 as the Project Lead, the Department for International Development in Tanzania in 2010 as the Project Director, the European Commission in Europe from 2008 to Present as the Project Co-ordinator, the United Nations Environment Programme in Africa from 2008 to 2010 as the Principal Investigator and the European Commission/Defra from 2006 to 2009 as the Lead, Technical Assistance.
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Taryn Fransen is a Senior Associate at the World Resources Institute. She manages the Open Climate Network, an independent climate policy-tracking coalition for which WRI serves as the secretariat. Launched in late 2010, the Open Climate Network convenes independent policy institutes from each of over a dozen key countries to track national progress on climate change through robust, consistent, and transparent assessments.
Taryn joined WRI in 2005, and for several years led the GHG Protocol Initiative’s efforts to build GHG accounting capacity in developing countries. In this capacity, Taryn led the technical design of the Mexico GHG Program, the first developing country GHG registry, and contributed to the development of similar programs in Brazil, China, India, and the Philippines. Along with GHG Protocol colleagues, she co-authored the Basics of GHG Accounting curriculum for the GHG Management Institute, where she has served on the faculty. Taryn has also contributed to WRI’s research on measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) under the international climate policy regime and led two strategic planning initiatives for the Institute: one on supporting emerging economies in the transition to low-carbon development, and the other on enhancing WRI’s engagement in Brazil.
Prior to joining WRI, Taryn was Associate Program Officer at the United Nations Foundation, where she helped manage a grant portfolio addressing energy, development, and climate change. From 2001 to 2003, she was a Fellow at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, where she coordinated research on the corporate response to climate change and developed a database of US state-level climate policies. Taryn has also provided research support to a range of clients in the environmental community, including the World Wildlife Fund, the Tropical Science Center, and the Stockholm Environment Institute. She holds an M.S. and B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University, and speaks Spanish and Portuguese.
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Kiran Pandey is a Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank. He is currently leading the World Bank's effort in systematically tracking the Bank's portfolio related to climate change. Most recently he led coordinated a set of seven country studies on the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change for the World Bank. Prior to this he was a Senior Environmental Economist at the Global Environmental Facility where he developed and implemented an explicit system for prioritizing GEF investments on climate change and biodiversity across countries and programs. He has also carried out research on both indoor and outdoor air pollution and their human health effects and is a contributing author to WHO's Global Burden of Disease studies in 2004 and 2012. He has a PhD. in Economics from University of Maryland, a MS in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College and a BSE in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University.
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Christian PeratsakisPresentation
Christian Peratsakis is a Research Assistant at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security & Law and a Research Fellow with AidData. He previously served as AidData's project manager for environmental research. Mr. Peratsakis is completing his MA at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and graduated from the College of William & Mary with degrees in African Studies and Government. His research centers on aid effectiveness and transparency, innovations in development financing and practices, climate financing, and emerging donors.
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Moderator: Catherine (Kate) Weaver
Kate Weaver is Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a core researcher in the Robert S. Strauss Center’s program on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS), a multiyear research project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Minerva Initiative. She leads the CCAPS project on tracking and geomapping climate aid flows to Africa.
Kate was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2001-2001 and received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. Dr. Weaver's research focuses on the culture, behavior and reform of international financial institutions, foremost the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as issues of transparency and accountability in international development aid. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, Dr. Weaver is the author of the award-winning Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform (Princeton University Press, 2008) and co-author of Theory and Practice of International Organizations (forthcoming, Rowman & Littlefield Press). She is also co-editor of International Political Economy: Debating the Past, Present and Future (Routledge Press, 2010) and The Handbook of Global Economic Governance (forthcoming, Routledge Press). Organizations. Dr. Weaver is currently co-editor of Review of International Political Economy and co-founder of the Alliance on Governance Research & Analysis (AGORA).
Session 2: Q&A
Session 3: Closing the Feedback Loop: Innovations in Grassroots Monitoring of Aid and Public Service Delivery
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Moderator: Brad Parks
Brad Parks is Co-Executive Director of AidData and Research Faculty at the College of William and Mary's Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations. He is also a Visiting Research Associate at the Center for Global Development and a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Brad has written and contributed to several books and articles on aid allocation and aid effectiveness. Most recently, he co-authored Greening Aid? Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance (Oxford University Press, 2008) and A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy (MIT Press, 2007). From 2005-2010, Brad was part of the initial team that set up the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). As Associate Director of Development Policy, he was responsible for administering MCC's annual country selection process and providing strategic guidance to MCC's senior management and Board of Directors. As Acting Director of Threshold Programs, he oversaw the implementation of a $35 million anti-corruption and judicial reform project in Indonesia and a $21 million customs and tax reform project in the Philippines. Brad holds an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics and a BA in International Relations from the College of William and Mary.
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Shanta Devarajan
Shantayanan (Shanta) Devarajan assumed his current position as Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region in 2008. The office of the Chief Economist provides guidance on Bank programs and activities in the sub-Saharan Africa region, analyzing both economic and sector programming to ensure the coherence of regional needs and Bank programming. Furthermore, the office of the Chief Economist is one of the primary voices within the Bank for monitoring, analyzing, and reporting on the economic conditions, trends, and forecasts of the sub-Saharan region.
Since joining the World Bank in 1991, Mr.Devarajan has been a Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group, as well as the Chief Economist of the Human Development Network. More recently, Mr. Devarajan was Chief Economist of the South Asia Region. Mr. Devarajan was the Director of the World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People. Before 1991, he was on the faculty of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The author or co-author of over 100 publications, Mr. Devarajan’s research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources and the environment, and general-equilibrium modeling of developing countries. Born in Sri Lanka, Mr. Devarajan received his A.B. in mathematics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
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Jonathan Gosier
Jonathan Gosier is a designer, software developer, lover of data science and the co-founder of metaLayer which creates apps that enable users to contextualize the mobile and social web. From 2009 to 2011 he served as Director of Product for SwiftRiver at Ushahidi working on an open-source platform for drawing insight from real-time content. The SwiftRiver project was awarded the 2011 Knight News Challenge award for its potential to improve the data journalism and news gathering process.
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Sahr Kpundeh
Sahr Kpundeh is Governance and Anti-Corruption (GAC) Adviser in the World Bank Africa Region’s Core Operational Services Unit. Prior to this appointment he was a Senior Public Sector specialist with the Public Sector Reform and Capacity Building Unit in the Africa Region. Over the last 18 months he has been on a DAIS assignment as Focal Point for Governance and Anti-Corruption (GAC) work in Bank projects in the Africa Region. During his DAIS he provided high quality and timely GAC advice and technical support to Africa project teams and led key GAC initiatives with non-state actors such as Contracts Watch and E-ISR Plus that are advancing the Region’s operational work. Dr. Kpundeh has authored over 20 articles on governance and anti-corruption as well as edited several books. Some of his published books include the following: Building State Capacity in Africa: New Approaches, Emerging Lessons (World Bank, 2004); Politics and Corruption in Africa: A Case Study of Sierra Leone (University Press of America, 1995); USAID Handbook for Fighting Corruption (USAID Technical Publication Series, 1998); Corruption and Integrity Improvement Initiatives in Developing Countries (UNDP/OECD, 1998); Curbing Corruption: Toward a Model for Building National Integrity (1999, The World Bank); Democratization in Africa: African Views, African Voices (National Academy Press, 1992). He received his Masters and Ph.D. degrees from Howard University (Washington, D.C.)
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Britt Lake
Britt manages GlobalGiving's network of amazing project leaders and leads partnerships with over 1,000 organizations around the world. Britt returns to GlobalGiving after working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and with a variety of non-profits in Sierra Leone, South Africa, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. Britt holds a B.A. in International Studies from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, a Master's in International Relations from the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and a Master's in Public Affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.
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Daniel Nielson
Daniel Nielson is Director of the Political Economy and Development Lab at Brigham Young University, where he is also Associate Professor of Political Science. He is co-founder and principal investigator of AidData and a consultant with CCAPS. He received his PhD in international affairs from University of California – San Diego in 1997. His scholarship focuses on international development, foreign aid, and international organizations. His work at the Political Economy and Development Lab employs randomized control trials to focus on information transparency in development and the control of corruption. He co-edited Delegation and Agency in International Organizations, published by Cambridge University Press. He has also authored articles in the American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, World Development, and Comparative Political Studies, among other journals.
Session 3: Q&A
Closing remarks: Jean-Louis Sarbib
