Open-source software is an amazing phenomenon. But it's not the answer for international development, any more than it is in any other field. I love open-source software. I'm writing this blog post in Ghost, an open-source blogging platform, using Google Chrome, a (mostly) open-source browser built on top of the open-source Blink engine. Ghost runs on Node.js, which is also open source. The DevResults app is built using open-source »

DevResults is a bootstrapped software company, meaning we’re funded only by our revenue. In almost every way, this has been a dream come true. The independence has granted us the freedom to define how we work and what we work on. Most importantly, we’ve been able to focus on helping our clients, instead of meeting investor expectations. But bootstrapping has its disadvantages. Since our start in 2004, we’ »

We're proud to announce the unveiling of our new, improved Index pages. These are the pages that list all of your activities, all of your indicators, etc. We completely rewrote these from scratch to get you improved performance, a cleaner interface, and a whole bunch of perks. The new pages are considerably faster, the filters/search are much more responsive and user-friendly, you can now create new activities in bulk, »

We're pleased to announce our newest feature: custom queries. Working with one of our Data Scientists, you can define a custom layout for some DevResults information in Excel. We'll write the query and save it directly in your site, and you can run it whenever you need it. Here's what you need to know about the feature. 1 Why Would I Need It? Sometimes, you need to see info in »

We just completed a migration of all of our help documentation to a new platform. Here's what you need to know about the change. The more things change, the more they stay the same. You'll keep accessing it using the same trusted url (http://help.devresults.com), and all the same content is there, just in a smoother interface. New landing page The significant difference you'll see is the site's »

We're proud to announce the unveiling of our new, improved Indicator Definition page. The Indicator Definition page contains a lot of the rules and logic that dictate how DevResults calculates and displays indicator performance data. So updating this page touched many corners in the site and prompted us to overhaul all kinds of behind-the-scenes calculations and logic. We're intensely proud of how much more user-friendly the page is now, and »

We're working to make DevResults easier to understand and use. Our newest feature is the Diagnostics panel. Don't see what you're expecting in DevResults? This page should be your first stop. It highlights potential problems with your configuration. It doesn't find every problem yet, but we're going to keep working on every configuration warning you might need. For now, here's what you need to know to start using it: 1 »

Aid transparency is not an end in itself: It is a means towards an end. Transparency leads to greater accountability, and accountability leads to greater effectiveness. The donors and others who are committing to publish data are, in effect, agreeing to be held accountable: Accountable to each other, and ultimately accountable to the citizens in the recipient countries and to the taxpayers in donor countries. The International Aid Transparency Initiative »

We're in the process of adding import and export support for the IATI XML format to DevResults. Although IATI is primarily conceived as a public transparency standard (hence the T), many organizations are beginning to see it as a promising interchange format for reporting results — either outbound reporting (to a funder, or to a home office) or inbound reporting (from a grantee or contractor). However, the IATI standard currently »

At DevResults, we are committed to providing you with the best possible tool. It has to be fast, accurate and easy to use. But just like international development, this is an ongoing improvement process. When something isn't working, we want to know as quickly as possible so we can fix it. Why we needed a new tool We want to make getting help with DevResults as easy and friction-less as »

There are lots of obstacles inhibiting the flow of development data. One important one is the lack of common standards for performance indicators. We would like to start just by creating a clearinghouse of existing indicator lists, and then using crowdsourcing tools to cross-reference these. Apples to apples It's difficult, even with a relatively small and self-contained universe (like a single international NGO, or a single USAID mission) to agree »

About fifteen years ago I came home to the U.S. after several years in West Africa and started doing some freelance web development. Four years later I had more work than I could handle on my own. So in 2004 I incorporated Caudill Web. Shane Kunkle took a big chance and left the security of a big company to join me. Over the years, we grew slowly, preferring to »

Three decades ago, foreign aid professionals like my father had to cobble together homemade databases in order to keep track of their work. Today, not much has changed, and practitioners in the field still lack the software tools they need to count their outputs and analyze their impact. DevResults is working to change that, by creating easy-to-use software specifically intended for monitoring and managing foreign aid programs. This is the »

The engineering team here at DevResults has a lot going on right now. These are some things we're working on these days that we're really excited about. Reintroducing simplicity As more and more people have started using DevResults over the last few years, we’ve been adding more and more functionality and complexity to the site, and the cohesiveness and simplicity of the user experience has suffered as a result. »

Data has the potential to really transform the way foreign aid is done. Better data makes it possible for donors to be transparent. It makes it possible for decisions and priorities to be evidence-based. It makes it possible to hold everyone involved more accountable. Let's go beyond the hype, though, and talk about the actual mechanics of capturing and using development data. This article is adapted from a talk that »