Laia Grino

Laia Grino's picture
Title: 
Senior Manager, Transparency, Accountability and Results
Phone: 
202-552-6567
Department: 
Strategic Impact

 

Laia Griñó is Senior Manager of Transparency, Accountability and Results at InterAction. Laia leads InterAction’s work on transparency – focused on both InterAction members and the U.S. government – and is responsible for data quality and standards for NGO Aid Map. This “who is doing what where” initiative aims to map InterAction member projects around the world in order to help improve coordination and collaboration, facilitate partnerships, inform advocacy, and promote transparency and accountability within the NGO sector. She also manages InterAction’s Evaluation and Program Effectiveness Working Group (EPEWG), which seeks to both improve the capacity of InterAction members to measure and demonstrate their effectiveness and to inform donors’ evaluation policies and practices.

 

With InterAction since 2007, Laia has also worked on issues related to aid effectiveness, USAID procurement policies and private development assistance.

She holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Southern California and a Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) with a concentration in international development from Georgetown University.

Happy to be Drowning in U.S. Aid Data – Keep it Coming

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Fri, 08/02/2013 - 9:29am

Last week, it would have been much, much harder to answer questions like, “Who is USAID funding to do work in Kenya? What is that funding for?” Or more generally: “Who is getting funding to do what and where?” With the latest update to the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, finding the answers to those questions has gotten easier.

NGO Aid Map: Balancing More Data with Data Quality

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 9:11am

This last blog post of the series delves into the challenge of balancing the demand for more data with the need to ensure a sufficient level of data quality. For NGO Aid Map to be successful, people must view it as a source of reliable and useful information, which suggests the need to prioritize data quality. On the other hand, if the initiative seems to lack forward momentum and starts to feel stale, this also invites failure. So what direction will NGO Aid Map be taking? For reasons we’ll explain below, we’ve chosen to go wide over going deep.

NGO Aid Map: The Tricky Question of Use

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Mon, 02/25/2013 - 4:25pm

One of the first questions we get about NGO Aid Map – an initiative that pools and shares data about the work of InterAction members around the world – is, “Who visits the site?” A close second is, “How are people using the site?” Though we have some information about this, these are both surprisingly difficult questions to answer.

The “Who”

NGO Aid Map: We Built It. Have They Come? (Part 2: Making it Easy to Participate)

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Wed, 02/13/2013 - 5:14pm

In the second post in this series, I discussed what we’ve learned about what motivates InterAction members to provide data for NGO Aid Map, an initiative that pools and shares data about the work of InterAction members around the world. But incentives are just one part of the equation.

NGO Aid Map: We Built It. Have They Come?

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Wed, 01/30/2013 - 11:09pm

The viability and success of NGO Aid Map, a mapping initiative that pools and shares data about the work of InterAction members around the world, depends entirely on whether InterAction members contribute data. Unlike an organization or donor that can require its staff or grantees to share certain information, participation in NGO Aid Map is completely voluntary.

NGO Aid Map: Two Years Older and Wiser

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 5:30pm

Open data, or “data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone” – combined with standards that make that data comparable across organizations – is being touted as one of the keys to improving philanthropy and international aid. The thinking is that by making aid information easier to combine, access and use, accountability for aid resources will improve, funding will go where it’s needed most, and opportunities for corruption will be reduced.

Will NGOs Join the Open Data Movement?

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Tue, 07/10/2012 - 3:19pm

NGOs are certainly not expected to publish open data tomorrow. But open data is not just another trend that will eventually fade away – it represents a change in expectations about the way organizations should operate.

NGOs Assess Relationships With Local Partners

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Submitted by Laia Grino on Wed, 03/23/2011 - 5:29pm

The quality of relationships between international NGOs and their local partners relates directly to the effectiveness of their development work. Recognizing this, 25 organizations participated in a survey last September to collect feedback from their local partners. Findings from the survey, conducted on behalf of U.S.