The College of William & Mary will receive the largest single financial award in its history – $25 million from the United States Agency for International Development to create a center for tracking global aid.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) chose the college to lead the award, which will be disbursed over five years to W&M and its partners to create the AidData Center for Development Policy. The center will use data and web tools to track the delivery and effectiveness of global aid to developing countries.
The award is part of USAID’s new Higher Education Solutions Network program, which aims to establish mutually beneficial partnerships with higher education institutions to help the agency solve global development challenges by leveraging expertise. W&M was one of seven institutions chosen to lead projects for the agency, which announced the award competition last spring.
“This award is designed to create a partnership between the federal government and the institutions selected to inform each other and come up with real, innovative solutions,” said Stephen Hanson, vice provost for International Affairs and director of the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies.
USAID administrator Rajiv Shah said in a press release that the collaboration between his organization and universities offers the potential to lift “more than 700 million people back from the abyss of hunger and malnutrition.”
The AidData Center will be headquartered at W&M’s Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations. The center will be a partnership between W&M, Development Gateway, Brigham Young University (BYU), the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) and ESRI, a company specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) technology.
The work has already begun. AidData, a collaborative initiative between W&M, BYU and Development Gateway, was formed in 2009 through the merger of two existing programs: Project-Level Aid (PLAID) and Accessible Information on Development Activities (AiDA). W&M’s project grew out of a dissertation completed by then-undergraduate Brad Parks, who now serves as co-executive director of AidData.
AidData is now recognized as the largest public access database tracking development project financing in the world, keeping up with more than $5.5 trillion and one million development projects managed by 91 donor agencies, according to a press release. With the help of USAID’s award, the database will be able to increase its tracking and mapping capabilities, allowing users to click on a location in the world and see what funding has been available, how it was used and whether it was effective.
“The center will build a global network of geographers, health scientists, economists, political scientists, computer scientists and statisticians who are committed to helping USAID and other developmental agencies reduce the cost and increase the impact of their aid programs,” Parks said. “The Center will also empower the intended beneficiaries of aid with the information needed to hold their own governments and development agencies accountable for results.”
Michael Tierney, co-director of the college’s Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations (ITPIR), will serve as director of the new AidData Center. He told W&M news that transparency is vital to the future of development aid.
“U.S. citizens are happy to invest some of their taxpayer dollars in efforts to combat disease, poverty and environmental degradation,” Tierney said. “They are not happy to see their money spent to prop up corrupt governments. Making aid transparent reduces opportunities for waste and corruption.”
By making data available to everyone online, governments, aid agencies, beneficiaries, researchers and journalists will be able to better evaluate what needs exist, what projects work and how money is best spent.
One map (shown at right) shows successful and unsuccessful World Bank projects in Afghanistan, overlaid with data on regional violence. World Bank Managing Director Caroline Anstey told AidData that the “surprising results challenged our conventional wisdom.”
Although the plans for the Center are still in development, Hanson said it presents tremendous opportunities for the college. Interested parties from around the world will be coming to Williamsburg to think through global problems, he said. Students will also have opportunities to play significant roles in gathering data, engaging stakeholders and coding the website.
Hanson said this could open up chances for students to travel abroad and meet with donor agencies and beneficiaries to encourage them to report their data. He said there is “no question” the establishment of the Center will be attractive to students interested in international relations, an already popular major at the school. “We are already very selective, and I think we’re getting the best and the brightest,” Hanson said. “Increasingly, we’re seeing students enter the college wanting to change the world.”
Hanson said William & Mary is already discussing ways to leverage the award to raise more money privately. “We don’t expect this to be a project we do in five years and then move on,” he said. “We see this as a foundation for something that will go on into the indefinite future.”
