The UN Environemtn Programme (UNEP) and The World Council on City Data (WCCD) have signed a new partnership agreement to improve and standardize urban metrics for policy-making, sustainability and resource efficiency in cities.

The Partnership will oversee a pilot program to help cities implement a resource efficiency toolkit, pioneer best practices and help them achieve the Council's  first ever international standard for city data and has been embraced by cities and governments, the  ISO 37120 certification. The pilot includes cities from around the world such as Brussels, Johannesburg, London and Shanghai. Read more about the partnership here.   

Today the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the  Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2015 (H.R. 3766), a piece of bipartisan legislation which would ensure that  U.S. foreign assistance budgets and programs be transparent and based on rigorous evidence. The bill  would both establish evaluation guidelines for U.S. international development and economic assistance programs and centralize public access to data and reports through the existing ForeignAssistance.gov aid transparency website.

The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network and InterAction are sponsoring a sign-on letter supporting the legislation in both the House and Senate. You can read the letters here and here. If your organization is interested in joining the IHC and many other organizations on the letter, please fill out the sign-on form here.