The foreign aid budget can be made more effective and transparent  While a second Obama administration is not going to cut back on foreign aid the Obama campaign however, does argue for pragmatic budgetary approaches to foreign aid, [1] creating transparency measures [2] to ensure that “assistance [is] more transparent, accountable and effective”. [3] The Obama administration has signed the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation [4] which makes transparency a key pillar of overseas development [5] and has succeeded in significantly increasing transparency; in 2010 the U.S. was ranked 24th [6] in Quality of Official Development Assistance rankings on transparency, by 2012 it had moved up to 9th. [7] It is also clear how beneficial transparency is for the recipients of aid; Uganda implemented Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys in 1996. Surveys had shown that only 13% of funds for schools was actually getting to the schools but the introduction of PETS increased this to between 80-90% simply because it was public that the school should have received money. [8]  [1] ‘U.S. Foreign Aid By Country’, Huffington Post, 30 August 2012.  [2] Foreignassistance.gov.  [3] Shah, Rajiv, ‘Improving the Quality and Effectiveness of International Development Aid’, The White House Blog, 1 December 2011.  [4] ‘Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation’, busanhlf4.org, 29 November – 1 December 2011.  [5] Atwood, Brian, ‘The Benefits of Transparency in Development’, OECD Insights, 3 April 2012.  [6] Baker, Gavin, ‘U.S. Scores Poorly on Transparency of Foreign Aid Spending’, OMB Watch, 7 October 2010.  [7] ‘Transparency and Learning’, Global Economy and Development at Brookings, 2012.  [8] ‘Empowerment Case Studies: Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys – Application in Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and Honduras’, World Bank.