Netherlands Enterprise Agency: why we’re publishing results data

  • Jan. 16, 2017

We spoke to Erik Hesseling, IATI coordinator at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency on their commitment to publishing results data.

How is the Netherlands Enterprise Agency involved in IATI?

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) started publishing data to the IATI Standard in February 2015, followed by a visualisation of the data on our website, Aiddata.rvo.nl. Here we share information on more than 1100 projects, across 125 countries.

“By publishing and visualising IATI data, policy makers, politicians, Civil Society Organisations, the media and the general public get a better insight into how public money is spent”

We believe that transparency enhances the effectiveness and quality of development aid. By publishing and visualising IATI data, policy makers, politicians, Civil Society Organisations, the media and the general public get a better insight into how public money is spent.

Why do you think it is important to publish results data?

We believe it is important to share our results data so the public have access to information on the goals and objectives of RVO.nl’s programmes and projects. Therefore, we have recently undertaken a pilot to visualise aggregated results data on Aiddata.rvo.nl. This has also helped to improve RVO.nl’s reporting to the Netherlands MFA on the programmes and projects that they fund.

What information on results is provided by RVO.nl?

At Aiddata.rvo.nl/ users can find aggregated information, followed by results in detail on corresponding projects. Results include:

  • number of jobs supported;
  • number of companies with supported plans to trade or invest; and
  • amount of generated co-investment.

These results were chosen because the Netherlands MFA report them to Parliament as the main indicators of progress on all private sector development programmes. This information can be found by using the ‘Results’ button on each webpage, along with the filter provided.

Tell us a little more about the Netherlands Enterprise Agency

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) is an executive agency of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and is commissioned by several Dutch ministries and the European Union.

RVO.nl executes more than 20 programmes funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). These focus on private sector development, food security, water management, sanitation, infrastructure, energy, and investments in and import promotion from developing countries.

What are your plans for the future?
RVO.nl plans to publish IATI results data on more indicators, for example on food security and water management. We’ll also present data and visualisations on the contribution that our programmes’ and projects’ make to the Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, RVO.nl plans (in 2017/2018) to visualise data from other IATI publishers on programmes, countries and sectors that RVO.nl is active in.