Before joining UNDP last month, I had collaborated with UNDP throughout my career – as a civil society partner, working in countries like Guatemala and Mozambique, as an OSCE elections monitor in Armenia and as a donor in my last role as Sweden’s State Secretary for International Development Cooperation and Climate.

My experience as a development practitioner, in a variety of roles, tells me that transparency and accountability are fundamental to gain trust and make change.

That is why I think it is so important for UNDP to demonstrate its commitment to transparency and accountability – and why I’m keen to continue building on this work as head of UNDP’s Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy.

I’m proud to be speaking this week, alongside several eminent panellists, on “Retrospectives and future trends on data, transparency and open government”. Among many celebrations taking place at the 2018 UN General Assembly, UNDP is co-organizing this important event to mark the 10th anniversary of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). UNDP was a founding member of the initiative in 2008, and we have led the Secretariat of IATI for the past five years.

IATI’s aims have been clear from the moment it was launched during the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, Ghana. Founding members wanted to ensure governments in developing countries have the information they need to make data-driven decisions that support their national development policies. This fundamentally supports UNDP’s own efforts to improve the effectiveness of development, and we’ve been fortunate to be engaged in this agenda ever since.

UNDP was instrumental in ensuring the voice of developing country governments informed the creation of the IATI Standard by holding extensive consultations throughout our network of programme countries. We engaged hundreds of government and civil society representatives from 79 countries to understand exactly what data was difficult to access.

We heard that the key data needs were for timely, comprehensive and forward-looking data on development spending and activities of donors and non-government actors. Having this data in an open, accessible format would enable officials in ministries of finance to align foreign aid with domestic resources in planning budgets and delivering on their national development plans.