Many thanks to everyone who’s contributed views on IATI’s COVID-19 publishing guidance. In response to your views here and here, this post will:
- Explain the rationale for the content of the existing guidance
- Provide information on a two-week consultation with the IATI community
Rationale for content on COVID-19 IATI Standard guidance
We created the existing IATI COVID-19 guidance to rapidly respond to daily increases in the number of organisations publishing COVID-19 related activities using the Standard. The content aimed to a) be quick and simple to implement b) align with other major humanitarian partners reporting c) allow users quick and easy access of the data with IATI tools.
Specifically:
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Humanitarian Scope - we included this element in discussion with UN OCHA FTS, HDX and WHO. By aligning IATI data to other partners’ reporting, we are promoting interoperability of IATI data within the humanitarian sector and we will continue to advise organisations to follow this guidance. Additionally, we recommended that humanitarian activities responding to COVID-19 also use the humanitarian attribute at activity and/or transaction level.
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Title - including COVID-19 in the Activity title is simple and easy to implement, and can be found using free-text searches on d-portal and the Datastore. We will continue to advise organisations to include COVID-19 in their title, however if publishers are unable to do so, they should include this in their Activity description.
Consultation: Publication and use of COVID-19 data (6-20 April)
We understand that other members of the IATI community have suggestions on updating the COVID-19 publishing guidance, particularly on data on development activities.
Therefore we will launch a two-week consultation on Monday to gather your views on publishing and using data on COVID-19. We will incorporate feedback and suggestions already posted on Discuss about this issue and would really welcome additional views for the consultation on IATI Discuss, as well as through email and on the upcoming IATI webinar on 7 April.
After the consultation, we will propose updates on the guidance and summarise how users can access the data published on IATI tools.
COVID-19 Webinar 7 April
We invite you to discuss your views on the upcoming COVID-19 webinar- Tuesday 7 April, 3:30pm UK time. IATI’s Technical Team will firstly take participants through how to use the existing guidance and then hold a technical discussion on updating the guidance in the second part of the webinar. Register here and send any questions or comments to the IATI Technical Team in advance: support@iatistandard.org.
We continue to wish all members of the IATI community well and hope your organisations are managing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as best you can.
Do keep in touch though IATI Discuss or by emailing support@iatistandard.org
Best wishes,
IATI Technical Team