Today, CoST held a webinar for Open Gov Week, with its members and the International Secretariat showing how their new sustainability and climate finance data standards have and will support the delivery of quality infrastructure that improves lives. If you missed the webinar you can watch a recording here. 

The event started with moderator, Rueben Lifuka who is an environmental consultant, CoST Board Member and Chair of the Council of the International Anti-Corruption Conference. He highlighted the strong relationship between CoST and Open Government Partnership. This includes how these new modules support Open Gov Week policy areas, the overlap in CoST and OGP members, and collaborations on events and resources.  

After this, Maria Prado, CoST Senior Policy and Research Adviser, spoke about the process for creating the 78 new sustainability and climate finance data standards and the specific data points covered in these modules. Manuel Gonzalez, CoST Senior Regional Manager for Latin America; Geoffrey Odong, CoST Uganda Manager; and Imam Putrajaya, CoST West Lombok Manager spoke about the benefits and application of these modules locally and across their respective world regions: Jalisco and Latin America, Uganda and Africa, and West Lombok, Indonesia and Asia.  

This was followed by engaging questions from the audience on how these modules could be used outside of CoST’s membership and how CoST’s approach supports the implementation of these data modules.  

“From data to impact: climate finance and sustainability standards driving open government” event highlights include:  

• lessons from applying these standards on projects worth a combined total of over $1.3 billion in both internationally and domestically funded projects.

• why these modules have and can be used to focus on the least transparent stages of the infrastructure project cycle, including capturing risks at an earlier stage  

• how these modules can and will be used to improve civic engagement 

• CoST’s available support in institutions and entities applying the new data standards (you do not need to be a member to utilise these standards and our support).

To find out more, CoST has published climate finance guidance notes and a portal prototype. These new standards compliment existing CoST IDS and OC4IDS data standards. If you are interested to apply these standards please do get in touch with us at CoST@InfrastructureTransparency.org

CoST, the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative (CoST) is a leading global non-profit improving transparency, participation and accountability in infrastructure to deliver quality infrastructure that improves lives and strengthens economies. Stay up to date with our latest work through our newsletter and our social media: LinkedIn, Instagram, X/Twitter and Facebook.