3. What does IATI offer?
Statistics
Audited
Accounts
Management
Accounts
Forecasts
4. What is the IATI Standard?
Organisation Standard Activity Standard
Forward looking
budgets
Strategic
documents
Full transaction
history
Sub-national
Geographic coding
Conditions, Outputs,
Outcomes
Sectors and
Classifications
Country budgets
Forward looking
budgets
5. What is the IATI data format?
Machine-
readable
Easy to convert Easy to
compare
XML
6. What is the IATI Registry?
www.iatiregistry.org
7. Who is publishing to IATI?
International NGO
Government
Multilateral
National NGO
Private Sector
Academic, Training and Research
Foundation
Other Public Sector
Regional NGO
Public Private Partnership
267
11. Publication Process: Pre-Publishing
Post-Publishing
Update data quarterly Improve data quality
Publishing
Review your data Create a Registry Account
Pre-Publishing
Select publication method
Decide how to structure
data
Produce an
Implementation Schedule
17. What support is available?
Written and video
guidance
Support tickets Personal engagement
18. The IATI Community: The TAG
Attend a TAG meeting Join a working group
Join the Discuss
forums
Subscribe to the
newsletter
www.aidtransparency.net/technicaladvisorygroup
23. Participating Organisations
• Funding, Implementing, Extending, Accountable
Role
• Government, Other Public Sector, Multilateral,
Foundation, International NGO, National NGO, Regional
NGO, Private Sector, Public-Private Partnership
Type
• Country ISO Code + Registration Org. + Registration No.
• GB-COH-123456
Organisation Identifier
• Organisation Name
Name
123
24. Geographic Information
• ISO Code, Percentage
Recipient Country
• Vocabulary (OECD or UN), Code, Percentage
Recipient Region
• Coordinates, Administrative Area, Gazetteer ID,
Percentage
Location (sub-national)
25. Classifications
• Vocabulary, Code, Description, Percentage
Sector
• Bilateral; Multilateral; Private Sector Outflow etc.
Collaboration Type (OECD)
• ODA; OOF; Private Grants; Private Market etc.
Flow Type (OECD)
• Grant; Loan; Credit Equity; Investment; Debt Relief etc.
Finance Type (OECD)
26. Classifications 2
• Budget support; Core/Pool funding; Project; Technical
Support, etc
Aid Type (OECD)
• Tied; Untied; Partially Tied
Tied Status (OECD)
• Gender; Environment; Governance etc.
Policy Markers (OECD)
• Administrative and functional classifications in Recipient
Country Chart of Accounts
Budget Identifier
27. Performance Information
• Yes/No; Description
Conditions
• Outputs, Outcomes, Impacts
• Indicators
• Baseline, Target, Actual
• Time period
Results
28. Financial Information
• Annual budgets
• Value
• Forward Looking (3 years)
Budgets
• Time period
• Value
Planned Disbursement
29. Transactions
• Incoming Fund; Disbursement; Expenditure;
Commitment etc.
Type
• Organisation name, IATI Identifier
Provider & Receiver
• Date, currency
Value
• Flow type; Finance type; Aid type; Tied Status;
OECD DAC Classifications
30. Image credits
Images are courtesy of thenounproject.com:
Dollar designed by Luboš Volkov from the
thenounproject.com
Document designed by Nate Eul from the
thenounproject.com
Location designed by John Caserta from the
thenounproject.com
Apple designed by Blake Thompson from the
thenounproject.com
Graph designed by Matthew Hawdon from the
thenounproject.com
Network designed by Mister Pixel from the
thenounproject.com
Xml File designed by useiconic.com from the
thenounproject.com
Excel designed by José Campos from the
thenounproject.com
Information designed by Adrián Escudero from
the thenounproject.com
Computer designed by Icomatic from the
thenounproject.com
Tabs designed by Cody Foss from the
thenounproject.com
Team designed by Stephen Borengasser from
the thenounproject.com
Coins designed by hunotika from the
thenounproject.com
Coins designed by hunotika from the
thenounproject.com
Check Mark designed by Danny Sturgess from
the thenounproject.com
Survey designed by Michael Thompson from
the thenounproject.com
Share designed by Egor Culcea from the
thenounproject.com
Help designed by Pham Thi Dieu Linh from the
thenounproject.com
Person designed by Wilson Joseph from the
thenounproject.com
Group designed by Parmelyn from the
thenounproject.com
Email designed by Martha Ormiston from the
thenounproject.com
Meeting designed by Scott Lewis from the
thenounproject.com
People designed by Wilson Joseph from the
thenounproject.com
Person designed by Jens Tärning from the
thenounproject.com
Globe designed by Thomas Le Bas from the
thenounproject.com
People designed by Icons Pusher from the
thenounproject.com
Flag designed by Roman J. Sokolov from the
thenounproject.com
Collaboration designed by Krisada from the
thenounproject.com
Pay designed by Ricardo Luciano from the
thenounproject.com
Buy designed by Sebastian Wiercinski from the
thenounproject.com
Bow designed by Lisa Staudinger from the
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Flag designed by Dara Ullrich from the
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Exchange designed by Dmitry Baranovskiy from
the thenounproject.com
Editor's Notes
IATI is a voluntary multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to increase the transparency of development cooperation and consequently improve its effectiveness in tackling poverty.
At the centre of IATI is a data standard. This is a format and framework for publishing data on development cooperation activities, intended to be used by all organisations engaged in development, from government donors to private sector organisations, and national and international NGOs. It was designed in close consultation with key users of development cooperation data in developing countries, to ensure its relevance and utility for a variety of different data users.
IATI also provides a single point of access for the data organisations publish to the IATI Standard. This is called the registry. The registry holds links to all the data that is being published in the IATI standard format, meaning that users can access it from one single point.
IATI provides a way for development cooperation actors to carry out multi-purpose reporting.
Publishing once in the IATI format enables publishers to generate data that can be used in:
Statistical reporting
Audited accounts
Management Accounts
And
Forecasts.
The IATI Standard is split into two parts:
1) The Organisation Standard is used to describe the organisations involved in development cooperation. It holds information not only on the organisation name and identification, but also:
The organisation’s forward-looking budgets
Strategic documents such as country plans, annual reports.
Budgets per country or region
2) The Activity Standard is the space where organisations can publish comprehensive activity or project level details on their development cooperation. This includes:
Full transaction history – disbursements, expenditure, incoming funds
Sub-national geographic coding on the location
Sectors and classifications
Forward-looking budgets per activity
Conditions that are attached to activities, and results – outputs and outcomes.
IATI uses a data format called XML. To the human eye, this can look rather complicated and confusing.
However, its very easy to convert this format into more accessible formats – such as CSV, or even use it to drive tools that can generate graphs and tables of data from queries.
The reason IATI uses XML is because it enables swift, machine-readable formatting of complex data that can be easily exchanged and compared and mashed up with other data published in the XML format.
N.B. Recommend taking a new screenshot of the registry before using this presentation, so it shows updated number of publishers
The IATI registry serves as a single point of access for users to locate IATI data. It acts as a catalogue or index of all data published in the IATI format.
Rather than holding the data on its own server, once an organisations has created a file of IATI XML data, they publish it on their own server or website, before adding a URL to the registry which takes users to the actual data.
Since organisations first started publishing in 2011, 267 (Update at www.iatiregistry.org under “IATI Publishers”) have published data to the IATI Standard.
These include International NGOs, bilateral and multi-lateral donors, private sector, foundations and research organisations.
NGOs make up a considerable number of publishers, in part due to IATI reporting being made a funding requirement by some donors.
IATI is constantly working with stakeholders from different kinds of organisations to ensure that the Standard is flexible enough and designed in a way that supports reporting of a variety of organisational models. At present, they are engaging with organisations working in Humanitarian Aid, to understand how IATI can support their publishing efforts.
The next section of the presentation will provide an outline of the process organisations go through to publish data on their development cooperation activities to the IATI Standard.
IATI recommends that organisations adopt a very pragmatic approach to publishing to IATI.
Firstly, to commit to publication as an organisation, getting buy-in from other staff.
Secondly, to publish a first set of data. This does not need to be perfect, and all that you aspire to do, but getting a first set of data out is a valuable learning experience.
This can then be built on, perhaps by adding additional fields step by step
Until finally you comply with the standard.
IATI is about producing data in a MANAGEABLE way for publishers, that is MEANINGFUL for users.
The process of implementing IATI is not purely technical. In fact, the experience of existing publishers has shown that the most important area to focus on is:
Policy – ensure that senior management buy in to and commit to the IATI agenda and the organisation’s plans to publish IATI data.
ii) Once that is in place, ensure that internal data collection and management is in place to capture information accurately and well. This will mainly involve using or building on existing systems.
iii) Finally, once these things are in place, the technical aspect of producing the XML data is not a large job. We’ll explore later some of the tools available to support organisations through the technical process.
Several tools are available to organisations for capturing data and converting it into the IATI format, as well as organisations being able to generate their own IATI XML files from their internal systems.
It is recommended to research which method will be most effective for your organisation before you start publishing.
The first of these is Aidstream. This is an online data-entry tool, which allows organisations to enter information on their organisation and activities through use-friendly forms, and then automatically convert it into the XML format.
It also allows organisations to publish data on the Aidstream website, and automatically link it to the IATI registry.
A large number of publishers are using Aidstream to publish their data, with the majority being NGOs.
Detailed guidance, including a series of walk-through videos are available to support organisations who wish to use Aidstream.
The CSV Conversion tool has been developed to take an updated CSV template and convert it into an XML file.
Organisations simply map their data fields to those in the template, then add their data and upload the file into the tool.
Activities are the unit of reporting in IATI. Before an organisation starts publishing, they should assess their business model and work out how best they should define an activity.
Each publisher can define their activity in a way that best suits their working model.
A file of data will contain multiple activities, within which will be multiple transactions.
Some organisations may also choose to include sub projects in addition.
An implementation schedule is intended to:
Outline the publication policies of an organisation
Provide a timeline for when an organisation intends to publish different types of data
Allow the IATI Secretariat and other stakeholders to see your organisation’s commitment to greater transparency and the publication of data on your development cooperation activities.
This is not on obligatory document for all organisations to provide (N.B. Suggest editing this depending on audience – obligatory for NGOs who publish to IATI as a funding requirement, obligatory for implementers of the Common Standard), but it can be really helpful in terms of guiding your organisation through all the considerations of publishing to IATI.
The implementation schedule should be published and made accessible to potential users of your data.
A template for the implementation schedule is available at iatistandard.org
IATI recognises that organisations may have restrictions on the kinds of data they can publish.
Many organisations will have exemptions, perhaps for security purposes or commercial protection. These will differ, depending on the nature of work the organisation does.
IATI suggests that organisations write and then publish their own exclusion policy. It should be published somewhere accessible for users of data to understand the context of your data.
The IATI Technical Team seek to provide support to publishers of IATI data through
Written and video guidance, from the overall process, to specific guidance on individual elements of the Standard– this is available at www.iatistandard.org/guidance
Support tickets – You can create a support request on a particular issue on support.iatistandard.org which will be logged and responded to as soon as possible
Personal support – the IATI Support team can also provide individual support to organisations, particularly those with complex business models or new types of organisations who haven’t yet published to the IATI Standard.
IATI is governed by a multi-stakeholder steering committee that is supported by a Secretariat made up of UNDP, UNOPs, the Governments of Ghana and Sweden and Development Initiatives.
Supporting this work is a wide-reaching community of development actors, technical and data specialists. This group is the IATI Technical Advisory Group or TAG. Through the TAG, publishers, developers and data users come together to support development of the Standard and collaborate on publication on use of data. They meet about once a year, with most work being done remotely though a series of Working groups, online discussion forums and consultations.
For more information about being part of the TAG, visit http://www.aidtransparency.net/technicaladvisorygroup
We welcome new members to join the TAG if they are interested in engaging further with the IATI community.
As an organisation reporting to IATI, you can report in different ways:
Primary source publisher – when you publish data on your own organisation’s activities
Secondary source publisher – when you publish data on an other organisation or organisation’s activities (this is the case of the Foundation Center – an organisation to which US foundations report, which convert the data reported to them by foundations into the IATI format, and also the UNOCHA, who publish data from the Financial Tracking System to IATI). This is not official data from the primary source.
Primary source publisher on behalf of another organisation – this is when your organisation publishes data for another agency or organisation officially, on their behalf. This is still official data. The Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) publish primary source data on behalf of other Swedish government bodies engaged in development cooperation.
IATI Organisation Identifiers are unique codes, compiled of numbers, letters and hyphens that are used to identify organisations in the IATI data.
Some organisations may already have a designated organisation identifier through systems such as the OECD DAC Creditor Reporting System (CRS).
If you don’t already have one you can construct one, using the following information:
The ISO Code of the country where the organisation is registered
The registration organisation where the organisation is registered as a company
The registration number.
Here you can see an example of a UK organisation (GB), registered with the registration organisation Companies House (COH) and with registration number 123456
Initially when you report an activity there is a series of basic descriptive information.
Firstly an IATI Activity identifier – constructed from the Organisation ID, and another activity code, allowing each individual activity to be uniquely identified.
A title and a description – that should reflect as best as possible the nature of the project in way that is easily understood by a user who may not be familiar to the work.
Dates – Dates entered on an activity can reflect both planned and actual dates, and start and end dates.
Finally the status of the activity – this informs the users of the data whether the activity is at the planning, implementation, completion, or evaluation stage etc.
Participating organisations are any organisations that have a role to play in the activity you report.
When you report on participating organisations, there are four types of information you include:
- The role of the organisation – this is what they do. There are three types that are used most often:
Funding – an organisation that provides funds into the activity. Perhaps a donor, or even you as the organisation reporting the activity, if you provide your own funds into the activity
Implementing – the organisation who carries out the project or intervention, this can sometimes be known as the executing organisation. Some examples might include a public organisation, an NGO or a multilateral organisation
Extending – this could be an organisation involved in the project, not necessarily with a specific funding or implementing role. It could include a government body with an oversight function over your activity, or a private sector organisation that manages funds.
Accountable - the organisation responsible for oversight of the activity and its outcomes.
The type of organisation: is it a government, NGO, multilateral agency, private sector organisation etc.
The organisation’s unique identifier
The name of the organisation
There are three types of geographic information you can add to your activity reporting in IATI:
You can report all three of these if necessary, but it is best to work out which best applies to your organisation’s working model.
Recipient Country
Here, you report the country where the activity is focused, by entering the ISO country code, and a percentage of the activity that is focused in this country
Recipient Region
Here you enter the region code for where the activity is focused, and the vocabulary of that region (Either UN or OECD, since their definitions of regions are slightly different, and the percentage of the activity that is focused in this country.
Note that you might have activities that have share their focus between one or more countries and one or more regions, or a combination of both. You should use the percentage field to show this. The percentage allocation of each project should add up to 100.
Sub-national Location
IATI adds a lot of value to existing reporting on development cooperation activities, by enabling organisations to publish sub-national location data on their activities. This can be done by including information on coordinates, the administrative areas of a country, or Gazetteer entries. The sub-national location element in the IATI Standard also contains a percentage field that allows you to show the percentage allocation of the activity to the specific location.
IATI provides space for organisations to classify their data – giving it codes and descriptions that explain the nature of the activity they are reporting, and the way it is financed, channelled and managed.
A lot of the classifications are taken from the OECD DAC classifications, so it is possible that some codes included in these elements may not be relevant to all organisations. IATI works to incorporate alternative categories within the classifications to support different business models, and is always open to hear from stakeholders who are interested in doing this for their organisation types.
Sector is the first type of classification. When reporting the sector you report the sector code, the vocabulary for that code (OECD, World Bank, etc.), a description of the sector, and a percentage allocation of the activity to the sector in question.
Collaboration type – This is the type of collaboration involved in disbursing the activities funds – is it bilateral, or multilateral, an outflow from the private sector.
Flow type – the definition of the flow of resources – mainly taken from OECD codes – Official Development Assistance, Other Financial Flows.
Finance type – the kind of financing used for the activity – grant or loan etc.
Aid type – describes the nature of the activity– is it budget support, pooled funding, technical assistance, a project intervention etc.
Tied Status – This classification shows whether there are any restrictions on where procurement of goods and services can take place for the particular activity. Its possible for the activity to be tied (restrictions apply so that procurement can only happen in donor countries), partially tied (restrictions apply that procurement can only happen in certain donor and developing countries), or untied (that there are no restrictions on procurement location).
Policy Markers – the policy markers indicate whether an activity follows or focuses on a list of key policy issues. These include Gender, the environment, trade and development etc. etc. This element also includes a significance field, where you enter the percentage of how significant the activity is in regards to the policy marker you are reporting.
Country Budget Identifier – This was introduced to the Standard to support use of IATI data by recipient countries. It allows the reporting organisation to align activities with the functional and administrative classifications of the recipient country in their Chart of Accounts. It contains data on classification codes, budget codes, percentage of an activity aligned to the classification and a description. This element of IATI may not be relevant to all organisations, but those who have the information are encouraged to publish it.
The IATI Activity Standard incorporates data fields for reporting on the performance of the activity. This is split into two sections
Conditions – whether there are any policy or performance conditions related to the activity taking place or advancing. This field asks for a Yes or No entry on whether there are conditions, and a description of them if they exist.
Results – Organisations can report outputs, outcomes and impacts of activities, along with information on indicators; Baseline, target and actual figures (including text descriptions for more qualitative results), and a time period (start and end date).
Budgets and Planned Disbursements are two of the key types of activity-level financial data.
Budgets –This is the amount budgeted for the activity. Each budget period should be reported as no more than a year. You include the value of the budget and the date. IATI also recommends publishing forward-looking budgets for the next three years where this is possible.
Planned Disbursements – These are the amounts of money that the activity will expect to recieve over a given time period. Data under this element of the Standard includes the value and date of the disbursement. Planned disbursements should be reported for the next three years where possible. This information is particularly important for developing country governments who need clear forward plans of how much money they will receive, and when, in order to effectively plan and budget.
Transactions are IATI’s alternative to accounting information. They show the in and out flows of funds from activities, and add essential value in terms of traceability of development cooperation through the implementation chain. The flow of resources between organisations in the development aid chain can often be complex, and the IATI Standard has been designed to try and overcome the difficulty in following this flow. Reporting transactions is essential for this.
Data on transactions includes the following:
Transaction type – whether the transaction is an incoming fund (perhaps a tranche of funding from a donor), or outgoing – a disbursement (outgoing of funds to another organisation, perhaps a partner) or expenditure (outgoing of funds directly on goods or services), or commitments- the total budget or amount laid aside for the activity.
Provider/Receiver Information – the organisation name and ID of the organisation receiving and the organisation providing the transaction.
Value – the amount of the transaction
OECD DAC Classifications that explain the nature of the transaction in more detail – is it official development assistance money or a private sector flow etc. etc.
As a minimum, when reporting transactions, IATI asks for a quarterly aggregation of incoming and outgoing funds. It also asks for a Commitment, reflecting the total budget of the activity. Transactions should also be reported in their original currency, with a date of the value to enable currency conversion by IATI data users. Organisations should aim to provide the full transaction history of an activity when reporting it to IATI.
