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 »

As most of you know, we're a small but dedicated group of people, and we are constantly working to improve DevResults, but we know you don't always find out about those improvements right away. We're working to change that by communicating medium and major changes to you on this blog. In the last few weeks, here's what we've been up to: 1 New default messaging behavior for Activity's submission/return/ »

DevResults is used all around the world by many different kinds of people. In each of those places, the reason people use our software is to make the world a better place. Some DevResults users are working in their own countries; others have moved to unfamiliar places. All have dedicated their careers to making a difference, one way or another. But making the world a better place is hard. There »

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 »

We've rebuilt our demo site from the ground up, giving us a comprehensive sandbox for testing DevResults' capabilities, as well as a way for interested people to play with the software. From the first day DevResults launched as a stand-alone product, we've had a demo site available to showcase the software's functionality. The site showed how a fictitious development project might use DevResults to manage its work. The program isn't »

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 »

Note: We needed Kate a long time ago. Leslie Sage, our Director of Data Science, was putting in heroic hours to keep up with the onslaught of new DevResults users that have come on board in the past year. We knew it wouldn't be easy to match Leslie's work ethic and street smarts. We were lucky to find Kate, who is just as comfortable wrestling with spreadsheets and databases as »

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 »