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By Azra K. Nurkic, CEO & Co Founder of I4DI
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how easily development knowledge can slip away. As institutional and political priorities change, the public repositories that once grounded our work often get overlooked — or quietly disappear.
When years of project reports, evaluations, and lessons learned are no longer accessible, we lose more than documents. We lose context. We lose continuity. And too often, we end up repeating things we’ve already learned the hard way.
That’s why I’m proud to share the launch of DECfinder — a tool we built at I4DI to restore public access to over 110,000 curated documents from USAID’s Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC). These records include everything from evaluation reports and technical studies to project designs and strategic plans — covering decades of development efforts around the world.
It’s designed for the people doing the work: practitioners, policymakers, researchers. Whether you’re tracing the history of a project, looking for technical guidance, or just trying not to reinvent the wheel — DECfinder puts institutional memory back within reach.
Why Now?
We’ve already lost access to too much. The #DEC — once USAID’s largest and most robust online knowledge base — was taken offline not long ago, leaving a gap for all of us who relied on it. DECfinder isn’t a replacement for that system. It’s our response to the gap it left behind. A practical effort to preserve development knowledge and keep it in the hands of the people who need it — regardless of shifting budgets or bureaucratic resets.
Because when knowledge is shared and cumulative, it propels us forward. Faster.
If you’re designing an agriculture program, DECfinder can show you what’s been tried — and what worked. If you’re launching a new health initiative, you’ll find strategy documents, technical briefs, and evaluations from similar efforts. It doesn’t give you the answers, but it helps you ask better questions.
Built for the Field
We designed DECfinder to be easy to use. Search by keyword, country, sector, document type — whatever gets you to what you need. Want evaluation reports on food security in Latin America? Technical guidance on WASH from the 1960s to today? It’s all there — organized and tagged so you can filter quickly. The content is grouped into clear categories — like Studies & Literature Reviews, Evaluations, Technical Guidance, and Grant Reporting — and each document includes metadata for context (year, country, organization, etc.).
And most importantly: it’s free. While we’ve added a simple login for protection and responsible use, there are no paywalls or barriers to access. The documents were originally funded by the American people and created through decades of global development work. DECfinder, built independently by I4DI, is our contribution to keeping that knowledge accessible — as it was always intended to be.
What’s Next
I want to recognize the team at Institute for Development Impact – I4DI who made this possible — our engineers, data scientists, and knowledge enthusiasts who worked late nights and long weeks to make sure this wasn’t lost. And this is just the beginning. We’re already preparing to integrate other critical archives — including the full collection of GlobalWaters.org resources — to keep these valuable assets accessible and connected.
And we’re not stopping at access. We’re working toward a fully fine-tuned AI model trained on this archive — one that can help users surface patterns, lessons, and real-world insights at scale. Imagine being able to ask: → What approaches to youth employment have worked across regions? → What were the key lessons from scaling health systems in post-conflict settings?
So preserving knowledge is one part of the job, and unocing intelligence and putting it to work is how we carry that knowledge forward. We’re actively looking for partners who believe in this mission — who want to contribute, collaborate, or help expand this effort. If you see the value in preserving and activating institutional knowledge, we’d welcome your support and shared insights.
Best,
Azra Kacapor Nurkic
CEO & Co-Founder, I4DI
