AidData releases new data portal

Explaining it all Christian Peratsakis '09, technical associate at Development Gateway, discusses how to use dashboards on AidData 3.0. He was one of the main developers of the website. Courtesy of Galina Kalvatcheva

by Ellie Kaufman, AidData | October 30, 2013

AidData, a research and innovation lab based at the College of William & 玛丽, released the third version of its data portal, aiddata.org, as a part of Global Transparency Week on Oct. 29. This newest data portal expands the capacities of the site by providing more information than the previous version in an easy to use interface.

Held in Washington D.C., the launch event featured demonstrations on how to use the website from AidData staff and presentations from AidData partners at US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Development Gateway. About 200 people from think tanks, U.S. government agencies and international development organizations were in attendance.

“It’s rewarding because we have always seen the value of this, but to have such a large group of people from D.C. who are actually using the information to make decisions respond so positively shows that it’s not just us who value it,” AidData Director of Operations David Trichler said.

The site now features an expanded set of development finance flows, including information on foreign direct investment and remittances. The website features dashboards to view the information easily, and it includes a new Geographic Information System (GIS) map function to create, save and share maps from the web platform.

“A perennial challenge for policymakers, practitioners and civil society groups is joining up large, disparate datasets in order to identify patterns and trends,” AidData Co-Executive Director Brad Parks said. “AidData 3.0 makes it easier for users to collate, visualize and analyze the aid and development datasets that are most relevant to them.”

Last November, AidData received a grant from USAID to further its work tracking foreign aid at the subnational level in 15 countries. This work, powered by undergraduate research assistants who find and enter the data, will be available on the site as it is collected. The website, funded by USAID, provides the tools to find and visualize the information being collected.

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