Restoring Transparency: Rebuilding the Foundations of U.S. Foreign Assistance Data

Is the United States prepared to respond to the international assistance needs of today and tomorrow?  This is the first in MFAN's new blog series entitled, “Moving Us Closer to Operational Readiness: Critical Needs for U.S. Foreign Assistance." This series draws on the expertise of MFAN's members to explore the specific core functions needed at the State Department to manage effective development and foreign assistance programs based on MFAN's recent report.

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By George Ingram, Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institution, and Sally Paxton, U.S. Representative, Publish What You Fund.

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As mandated by Congress, transparency is a cornerstone of US foreign assistance – and for good reason. Among others, it provides Congress, stakeholders, implementers, taxpayers, the executive branch, other donors, and development partners easy access to public websites and data sets to understand, improve, and hold to account U.S. foreign assistance programs. The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN)’s recent paper on the Department of State’s readiness to manage U.S. foreign assistance programs identified transparency as a critical issue that needs attention.

Removal of aid data

In January 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order pausing U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days with the stated goal of reviewing all programs for efficiencies and consistency with U.S. foreign policy. Almost simultaneously, the Trump Administration dismantled the main USAID website, taking down enormous amounts of data and information which had the added effect of further compromising other data sets.

On February 21, 2025, we assessed the data loss in terms of funding, evaluations, program documents, and other critical information that should have been essential for the review of U.S. foreign aid programs. In April 2025, we submitted testimony outlining the critical loss of data, despite specific statutes that require timely, detailed reporting of U.S. foreign assistance.  And we made specific recommendations for restoring the data so that all stakeholders would have ready access to timely and robust information.

Status of significant aid data sites

Eight months later, we are revisiting the state of publication and disclosure of this information. What follows is an assessment of the state of play of these various information sources:

• USAID’s homepage, which directed users to policies, programs, reports to Congress, strategies, and results, and much more information, is still down.  The only current information on USAID.gov is information about personnel and one live tab for the OIG which provides information about ongoing investigations.
• The Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC), which is a massive repository for USAID documents, including reports, policies, strategies, and evaluations, was also a victim of the website dismantling. We understand there have been some discussions about restoring the DEC, but no public details have been released. We strongly support the effort to restore the DEC and hope that there will be consultations with the development community to ensure maximum useability.
• A separate but related USAID Evaluation Dashboard, which made it easy to track and access USAID evaluations across the globe, is gone. Especially given the importance and volume of USAID evaluations, we urge that this dashboard also be restored.
• Locally led development. USAID’s progress reports on its efforts to direct more funding to local organizations in partner countries, with the underlying data used to measure that progress, cannot be found on USAID’s website although the final progress report can be found on other sites. Especially as the administration is pushing a country-based approach (see, e.g., the new  American First Global Health Strategy), this information and analysis are particularly valuable.
• ForeignAssistance.gov, the detailed reporting of U.S. foreign assistance as required by the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act, seems to be updating U.S. data, although FY2024 and FY2025 are only “partially” reported. It appears that the “Beyond USG” – a valuable tool for country-based analysis of all donors – has been restored. Critically, however, as the source of data for this tab is U.S. publication to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), associated project documents are not included. The result of broken document links for both Beyond USG and U.S. publication to IATI means that information on project design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation are not available.
• Country Development Cooperation Strategies, which provided five-year plans for USAID partner countries, have been taken down. There is a webpage on State for other strategies but all the links to CDCS and regional strategies are broken. It is possible to search more generally for a CDCS for a particular country although that is not a user friendly, efficient process. CDCS contain valuable analysis which should be used as a basis to inform future work on US country compacts that State is starting to negotiate.
• Dollars to Results, which provided information on spending and impact (through GSA data.gov) has no data.
• USAID business forecasts and procurement plans. There is some general information about grants on Grants.gov but when clicking on Recent Grants, there is no data. Information about business forecasts likewise has no data.  
• Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) was originally taken down alongside the USAID website. It was relaunched as a separate website in June 24, 2025.  
• Publication of project level information by U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to ForeignAssistance.gov has been required since creation of DFC under the BUILD Act. This obligation has not been fulfilled, leaving a large information gap in non-ODA flows.  

Restoring data is only an initial first step to achieve sustainable data

The restoration of data and other critical information is only part of what needs to be addressed.  As MFAN recently found “the State Department lacks operational readiness to effectively and accountably manage America’s foreign assistance portfolio.”  It is not enough to simply transfer some of the functions from USAID to State; the State Department doesn’t have the staff, skills, and systems to effectively manage and implement the U.S. foreign assistance portfolio.

For State to meet the requirements of FATAA and to fulfill its pledge to U.S. taxpayers and assure accountability, it will need the capacity to deliver on transparency functions, especially those that were previously fulfilled by USAID. This includes not only collation and accurate reporting of timely data, and publication of evaluations, research, and learning, but also meeting other obligations such as reporting to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s foreign aid reporting dashboard (the Creditor Reporting System), legally required congressional reporting (known as “the Greenbook”), and publication to IATI. And finally, there is a strong need for State leadership to provide the vision, strategic planning, and coordination to support these functions.

Data Transparency is the Law

All these functions – including collecting and accurate reporting of timely data along with reestablishing robust monitoring and evaluation systems – are critical to an effective delivery of scarce U.S. resources. The taking down of so much U.S. data, in an apparent violation of the Federal Records Act and other laws, has dealt a significant blow to informed and efficient implementation of U.S. foreign assistance. This data is critical to informed decision making by U.S. government officials, other donors, recipient governments, and local organization and community partners. If the Administration and Congress are serious about its approach to delivering U.S. foreign assistance programs, it needs to take the Congressionally mandated transparency requirements seriously.