The ability of citizens to make their voices heard and hold their governments to account is fundamental to good government. Its absence fosters an environment in which corruption can flourish, and citizens are unable to assess the decisions of their leaders, or make informed choices about who they elect to serve as their representatives.
Civil society, the media, and others have a key role in promoting accountable governance and transparency.
To address some of these issues, DFID has created a new £100 million Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF). It is designed to help citizens hold their governments to account, through strengthening the wide range of groups that can empower and support them.
The criteria and guidelines for the GTF were launched in February 2007 with an initial budget of £100 million.
The deadline for applications for the Fund was September 2007 by which time we had received and began to appraise 272 individual proposals from an exceptionally wide range of applicants from the UK, mainland Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The proposals under consideration also covered a very wide range of governance and transparency issues making the appraisal and decision making process a very demanding task for DFID.
As well as full technical appraisals by experienced professional staff of the Fund Manager (a consortium led by KPMG) all proposals were also circulated widely around DFID including copies being sent to all relevant DFID country offices and posts.
The views and appraisals provided were used by DFID senior staff to approve a final list of 38 provisionally approved proposals (final funding will be subject to a variety of minor issues being resolved).
All 272 applicants have been informed of our decisions and unsuccessful applicants can all expect to receive feedback on our decision by the end of May.
The GTF was, and remains, a one-off Fund therefore there are no plans to issue any further calls for proposals.
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