There are an increasing number of sites that utilise data from the activity standard - but there doesnt seem to be much around organisation standard data.
I may be wrong - does anyone have any examples of usage to share?
Good question. It came up recently when I queried the data used on the D-Portal for the “Budget” columns. If you’re looking at a donor’s list of recipient countries, you’d intuitively expect “Budget” to come from the Organization file - which I now know isn’t the case.
So short answer is that I don’t have an example of a site using the data. Just one site that could (should, perhaps) but doesn’t.
Hi! Work is in progress already (as discussed last week with Yohanna) to add the org file budget data to the relevant tables in d-portal, in one way or another (https://github.com/devinit/D-Portal/issues/273) – be interested to hear people’s thoughts on whether a figure in brackets for the org file data, or a separate column, would be more helpful.
It’s subjective as to whether a user would expect this to be activity file or org file data (or whether they know/care about that kind of thing) – but there is more opportunity to break down and explore the budget data in the activity files than the aggregated org file budgets. Also nearly a third of publishers don’t have an org file at all, and from a quick look at those that do it seems like many org file budgets are not updated regularly - but hopefully showing this in d-portal/elsewhere will at least help to demonstrate this, and hopefully improve the data for users.
Hi @YohannaLoucheur @Matt - thanks for your thoughts
It does seem that the data published via these files is not in widespread (public) use. @Matt does highlight one potential reason - lack of coverage (around a third of publishers do not have one: http://dashboard.iatistandard.org/organisation.html) and timeliness.
Indeed - I can’t see any reference to the Org file in the “publisher statistics” that focus on Timeliness, Forward-looking and Comprehensiveness on the dashboard - http://dashboard.iatistandard.org/publishing_stats.html. And - the PWYF ATI doesnt seem to use it: http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/index/2014-ati/ (please correct me if this isnt the case).
Is this a missed opportunity (particularly in the drive for increased and engaged data use)? For many organisations, I know that the org file can represent the first / most accessible data to publish - org-wide budgets and documents can easily be gathered. Coupled with the fact that the org file can also help publishers sort and clarify their organisation identifier, it seems a shame that it is not then used or considered by the wider community…
Thanks @stevieflow - agree that increasing use of the organisation file would make a lot of sense. The organisation file includes some important data elements (total country budgets, for example) and a lot of important documents from the perspective of accountability and clarity around decision-making (e.g. aid allocation policies, country strategies, etc.).
One quick clarification - the Aid Transparency Index does use the organisation file. It gets 25% of the points in the Index which reflects the importance of a bunch of the data and documents in that file:
@stevieflow you make an excellent point regarding the Dashboard. The Organisation file is integral to the IATI Standard and should be part of the assessment. Not to mention that partner countries always put forward country budgets among their priorities.
Regarding @Matt’s question on the D-Portal, I would suggest again that when looking at the donor’s list of recipient countries (eg http://www.d-portal.org/ctrack.html?publisher=CA-3&tongue=eng#view=publisher_countries ), the country budgets from the Org file should be used. When looking at groups of activities (eg http://www.d-portal.org/ctrack.html?country=GH&tongue=eng#view=sectors ) then it makes sense to use foward data from the Activity file. Above all, it should always be clear wich field is being used as the source.
So … what do we do regards to the Org file? How to take it forward?
I made a suggestion above regarding the D-Portal. It’d be good to have comments/views on it - would it be useful, what should it look like, etc. I only mentioned country budgets, but perhaps other parts of the Org file would be of interest and could be added to the publisher’s overview page (eg http://www.d-portal.org/ctrack.html?publisher=CA-3&tongue=eng#view=publisher)
Beyond this, I think I’d bring forward again the idea discussed at the TAG of creating some sort of guidance notes around use cases - a series of short notes that would state a question (e.g. How do I find which projects are on budget/treasury in my country) and explain which IATI fields to use to answer it. We’d have to make sure some of these questions relate to topics that require the Org file data.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that there’s a lot of data already available to answer their questions. Demonstrating how existing data can be used, with concrete examples, would surely help.
Thanks @YohannaLoucheur
I’d agree on the use case idea. Equally, it would also be useful to flag up to publishers why it’s important to include various fields in any IATI publication. Is it feasible to surface these use cases through posts in a category on this forum?
It’s good to know from @markbrough that the Org file is a focus in the ATI. However, not all publishers are included in the ATI. We need to ensure that the Org file is published by all publishers if we want to include it as a serious part of the standard - maybe there is a “KPI” for the community to get this number to zero by the end of 2015: http://dashboard.iatistandard.org/organisation.html ?
The best way to show why various fields are important is to (try to) use them. The more we hear about real use cases - or plausible hypothetical cases - the more publishers will strive for quality and completeness.
Perhaps we can use this forum to gather specific cases/questions. We can also draw from the recent TAG discussions, as well as from the USAID and Development Gateway studies on using IATI at the country level. Perhaps we could also use the new IATI SC Bulletin to reach out in particular to partner country members. I’d be happy to contribute to an initial list of cases in a new thread.
Regarding your last point, we should ensure at a minimum that the Org file is taken into consideration in the Dashboard, as you mentioned earlier, and also in the transparency indicator assessment.