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Brigham Young University
PLAID’s Vision
Initiated in 2003, PLAID seeks to improve current development finance data by providing increased information on development projects and activities, including those not encompassed by the OECD’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS). The PLAID database contains donors not captured by CRS, including a variety of multilateral and non-DAC donors, as well as activities that do not fit the OECD definition of Official Development Assistance (ODA). A central goal of PLAID is to build upon the CRS’s substantial data by improving where possible upon long descriptions of development projects to allow improved categorization of projects and keyword searching of project purposes and activities.
PLAID’s Value
Current data regarding development finance lacks consistency, accessibility, and comprehensiveness. The PLAID database currently encompasses 147,000 multilateral and 565,000 bilateral donor projects spanning the years 1970-2007 with new projects added daily. The database includes in-depth descriptions of activities from a variety of donors, development finance flows not captured by the CRS, and health and environment variables that allow researchers to judge the likely impact of donor commitments. PLAID researchers are coding each project with multiple “activity codes” and a “dominant purpose” code. This allows those interested in development finance to gain a more accurate understanding of past and present trends.
Future Directions
PLAID is a multifaceted international research consortium spanning major US universities, NGOs, and individual researchers. PLAID is currently developing a publicly-accessible interface that would enable researchers, field workers, and policy makers interested in development finance to track donor commitments and disbursements in order to increase transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. PLAID welcomes partners from all fields of international development in order to improve the understanding of development finance.
Who's involved
PLAID is a joint partnership between Brigham Young University and the College of William and Mary. The project is currently funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In 2004, PLAID also received a grant from the National Science Foundation.