AidData and the OECD Creditor Reporting System
What are the two systems?
The OECD’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS) is maintained by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, which has been collecting information on international aid since 1960, and on activity-level aid since 1973. The CRS is the authoritative source of annual activity-level statistical information on Official Development Assistance (ODA), other official flows (OOF), and some private aid flows from the 24 OECD DAC members. It also contains information on the aid activities of many major multilateral organizations and several other non-DAC donors that is collected directly from these organizations. The OECD also maintains the DAC database of annual aggregate aid flows, which records the official annual total ODA, OOF and selected private flows reported by members of the DAC and other donors.
AidData is a collaborative initiative to provide products and services that promote the dissemination, analysis, and understanding of development finance information. At the core of the AidData program is the AidData web portal, which is a gateway to nearly one million past and present records of development finance activities from donors around the world. Complementing the work of the OECD, AidData aims to provide access to development finance activities from a wide range of DAC and non-DAC donors in an accessible format. In addition to providing access to these data, the team works on other projects that make it easier to access and analyze aid information. Although AidData strives to present the most complete and accurate aid information available, it is not an official source of data for any one or group of donors; for official statistics, please refer to the OECD
CRS or
DAC aggregates database.
What are the differences between the two approaches?
The OECD CRS database is the source of official statistics on aid and other official and private flows from OECD and some other countries as well as concessional and non-concessional flows from many multilateral institutions. The information in the CRS database is submitted by donor agencies and verified by the OECD. Information is published annually.
AidData builds on the CRS by providing information on aid activities from sources not covered by the CRS, including information that is not classified as “official development assistance" (ODA). In addition to the information re-published from the CRS, additional information published through the portal is collected directly from donors, donor websites, or donor publications. Since AidData does not rely exclusively on donor submissions, which take time to gather and verify, AidData is able to provide limited, unverified information on some donors in the current year. AidData is also working to introduce new types of aid information, such as foundation grants and impact evaluations, and place these in a central location. Finally, AidData's strong research background means that information which is no longer part of the online CRS statistical record, such as aid flows to recipients that have graduated from ODA eligibility or aid activity records prior to 1995 that do not meet the CRS standards of quality and completeness, are available through our website. For more information on what is captured in AidData, please see the
user's guide.
