OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 04/20/12 -- Today, the Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of International Cooperation, announced Canada's support for the Open Aid Partnership (OAP). The OAP, a flagship initiative of the World Bank Institute (WBI), is a three-year project that will increase capacity to produce, and use, open data in partner countries.

"Canada made significant progress in making its aid more open and transparent it advances its agenda to promote accountability and achieve development results that matter," said Minister Oda. "By supporting an initiative such as the Open Aid Partnership, Canada took its international transparency commitments a step further in enhancing the openness and effectiveness of its development efforts."

The OAP aims to harness the growing use of the internet, mobile phones and social media in developing countries to foster transparency and accountability. Supporting a free-flow of information to people in the developing world, and giving them the tools to provide feedback, allows increased accountability. This process allows people in the developing world to have a voice in determining how, and where, we use aid and development resources. The partnership will also engage donors in geo-coding aid information.

The OAP will work in close collaboration with the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which the Government of Canada formally joined on April 17, 2012, and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) signed in November 2011.

Canada will provide $1 million in support to the OAP over the next three years, making CIDA the largest partner donor to date. Canada calls on international development partners to join this important initiative. For more information on the OAP, please visit http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/open-aid-partnership.

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