This report presents the findings from an external review of CoST, the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative, carried out by Crown Agents. The external review was commissioned by the CoST International Secretariat on behalf of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MinBuZa), who are providing funding to CoST.

The main purpose of this review is to consider CoST’s relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability and complementarity to assist DFID and others in decisions about provision of funding beyond 2020. Specifically, it also considers, to date:
• How effective CoST has been in achieving the objectives of its Business Plan 2017-20, and in developing an approach enabling it to expand its global footprint to new countries/geographies, subnational governments and large-scale infrastructure projects
• How effective CoST has been in terms of achieving the objectives of DFID’s Infrastructure for Cities and Economic Development programme

The report also provides recommendations as to how CoST could modify its strategy and operational model to become more widely recognised across the globe, and also to enhance its impact.