Project-Level Aid Database
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The Project-Level Aid (PLAID) database has now become AidData: Tracking Development Finance, the most comprehensive and most granular resource on development finance projects. As AidData, it now contains records of over 900,000 international development projects financed by bilateral and multilateral donors from 1950-2010. Up until the official launch of AidData in March 2010, the PLAID database was the primary output of PLAID, a research partnership between the Institute for Theory and Practice of International Relations at the College of William and Mary, and the Political Economy and Development Lab at Brigham Young University. It was begun in 2003 to build upon on the existing work of the OECD's Creditor Reporting System. In August 2009, PLAID merged with the Development Gateway's Accessible Information on Development Activities Database to form AidData. The beta version of the AidData portal was launched in March 2010, and continues to be accessible to the public.
The PLAID database is made up of detailed information about each development finance donation committed by donor governments in the system. In an effort to augment rather than replace existing aid databases, PLAID pulls many projects directly from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee's (DAC) Creditor Reporting System (CRS). However, PLAID also works to include aid information that falls outside the official development assistance (ODA) requirement as well as the many donors who are not members of the OECD. In addition, PLAID data is coded for easy analysis of a number of individual sectors, such as the projected environmental or health impacts of a given project. The BYU team is also currently developing a modification of the CRS sector codes which allows for the classification of projects with multiple purposes.
In addition to its value to the development community, PLAID has been and continues to be an important tool for undergraduate training in international political economy and research. To date, nearly ninety students have been involved in research and database management, and at least six undergraduate students have authored or co-authored papers that they have presented at professional conferences in political science, including the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association, and the Midwest Political Science Association.
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