The Standard was conceived of a few years ago and has evolved over time. Given it has reached a significant number of publishers of varying business models, perhaps it is time to review the standard and see if we can identify what is there which should continue and what is there which should be removed or treated as an extension.
1 Like
I think the idea of a sending IATI to a âBootcampâ, to get it lean and mean again is a good idea. Like mentioned, weâve had a significant number of upgrades over the past few years and letâs have a critical look at what is and is not being used.
It would be good to ensure that the âcore standardâ, which will need to be defined, is fit for purpose, and that it is able to at least answer the what, where, why, when and who.
Agree. When you say removed or treated as an extension, are you suggesting the IATI standard itself should be drilled down to a single core, readily available to be used on its own, but extendable by default?
This would mean a major upgrade (or downgrade if you will) when we dive into 3.X âŚ
It is already
âCore elements are those that are mandatory in version 2.01 of the IATI Activity standard.â
http://dashboard.iatistandard.org/comprehensiveness_core.html
@rbesseling, @bill_anderson, Yes, though the core is defined, it might be a good time to think about it again. I will elaborate, and forgive me for using examples relative to who I work for, but I suspect they might be relevant to others.
I can specify a regional activity which might cover Africa, but I am not able to say that it actually covers only three countries in Africa because I am obliged to expand and state what percentage of money is allocated to each, and the reality is that we as an organization donât care and do not track it. We have an agreement with an entity and we hold that entity responsible for how things get broken up. There might be ways around this, but the reality is that it is not that straight forward and complicates the actual reporting process as well as dilutes the value of the information.
Results are an area we pushed to be included in the schema and it was a pretty simple structure for a reason. I do not believe that IATI should be a results framework as we each have our own. I still agree that that results should be there, but as they were initially, to help give context, more than anything else. As the section on results continues to grow, areas like contribution and attribution will also kick in which will make the whole traceability issue we are trying to grapple with look easy. This would be a great example of where you have a core results section and anyone can use extensions to expand on it further if they need to.
I am sure there are other examples like this that we can look at to make things a bit simpler and more relevant.
@siemvaessen I do think that this would be work for version 3.X and think that should ultimately be the focus (though others will surly disagree). To be honest I am starting to engage in this again so have not caught up on the roadmap.
This link should work again now - there was a glitch in last nightâs Dashboard generation process, so the files disappeared. Weâve now reverted to yesterdayâs version though.