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The term I’m seeing consistently in humanitarian 3Ws is “modality” (cash, voucher, in-kind, etc), though I understand that term might be overloaded for general ODA.
Agreed that this might not be reported at the donor level (unless some of the projects are earmarked in advance for cash, etc) but I’d expect to see it a lot at the implementing-partner reporting level.
To continue this discussion we have recently been made aware that the Cash Learning Partnership are developing some definitions for cash and voucher modalities (thanks @David_Megginson I’ll go with this term for now) .
Given that these definitions have not yet been agreed by the wider humanitarian community and may not be agreed in time for specific inclusion within the v2.03 Standard Upgrade we may have to consider introducing them post upgrade perhaps as a new ‘Aid Type’ vocabulary?
One advantage of this approach is that it does aid granularity of reporting in that aid-type can be declared at both activity and transaction level.
As ever the views of the community are welcome.
It may make sense to wait for these definitions to be finalized.
However, this does not address the more fundamental issue of messing up “Aid Type”, when in fact we are describing a type of expenditures.
Grand Bargain signatories have committed to measure cash programming as part of the Grand Bargain Commitment on cash programming. Most recent evidence is also calling for a more systematic measurement of cash and voucher programming. DFID perspective is that cash and vouchers need to be measured separately, as they have different risks, impacts and VfM. We also need to be able to track the volume allocated to cash transfers and to vouchers transfers to monitor progress towards the Grand Bargain commitment, and build the evidence base to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian aid. The Grand Bargain Cash Workstream has agreed to use the definitions of cash transfers as well as of voucher transfers included in the CaLP Glossary, and we support the use of these definitions in the tracking of cash transfers and of voucher transfers.
@YohannaLoucheur I’m not sure that everyone would agree with you that cash transfer programmes are merely a type of expenditure.
I agree with you that there is currently no satisfactory alternative for accurately classifying cash transfer (and related) programmes and we should take a pause.
I do, however, think there is value in this issue being referred to the WP-STAT. Is that possible?
As an update, the Cash Learning Partnership have now set up a working group which will be working on (amongst other things) cash / voucher definitions. I am a member of the working group as are representatives from OECD DAC and OCHA (for HXL). I anticipate that definitions are unlikely to be agreed to align with the Standard upgrade timelines but I remain hopeful that one of the outputs from the working group will be a codelist that we can integrate perhaps as another Aid Type vocabulary
We are just having a discussion here about whether cash/voucher “modality” should be an attribute of a transaction rather than an activity.
If we used an attribute like @modality we would need to think about the perspectives from different organisations in the delivery chain. Donors will rarely distribute cash or vouchers directly, and are more likely to go through intermediaries. For example:
Donor transaction needs to be labelled with a “intended for cash transfers” modality, but is actually delivered as a grant through bank transfer.
Intermediary transaction needs to be labelled with a “cash transfer” modality, as that will distribute cash to citizens.
tl;dr : modality needs to be an attrribute of a transaction
Thanks for the comments @JohnAdams which are really helpful. Also one of the reasons for considering referencing cash/voucher “modality” via an ‘aid-type’ vocabulary (assuming that enhancement gets accepted?) is because it is available at both activity and transaction level.
However, I do not wish to make any assumptions on implementation just yet as it might be that the referencing of such modalities may actually be made available via one of the DAC codelists that are used by IATI?
One of the significant advantages of have cash/ voucher modality assigned at transaction level is that we can then monitored volumes (£/$) delivered through these mechanisms.
By assigning the modality at activity level (as with aid-type) we take a step back in detail. We can identify activites using cash, we can not measure the amount of cash/ vouchers which these activites delivered to recipients.
We would strongly encourage IATI to explore solutions which enable tracking of volumnes. The OECD DAC solutions being explored at the moment (proect marker or key word in project decription) do not meet the needs of the Humanitarian community as this not enable reporting against the Grand Baragain commitment towards increased use of Cash.
Cash transfers and vouchers are not used only in the context of humanitarian aid. We should be thinking of the use cases where it would be useful to identify the use of these modalities, and then where best it fits in the standard (and in the delivery chain).
That being said, if this is accepted it will be interesting to see the somewhat contradictory pieces of data attached to activities… For instance, Donor A will provide funding (via a grant) to organization B to provide cash transfers to refugees. This will be coded at the same time, in the same IATI element DAC B03 (specific purpose program), “earmarked” given the very specific modality demanded by the donor, and “cash transfers”. GB signatories have committed to reduce earmarking, but to increase the use of cash transfers. Depending which vocabulary(ies) data users choose to look at, the same project could be judged quite differently in terms of delivering on GB commitments.
Completely understand that Humanitarian is not the only cash, but would hope for an identifier which gave maximum potential information- if volumes are less relevant in a particualr sector then a marker at transaction level can still be “scaled up” to identify programmes/ projects makign use of cash.
Regarding measuring earmarking vs use of cash, I hear what you say but I’m not sure I see the issue.
The commitment towards reducing earmarking could at first be considered through tracking volume delivered to recipients as multi-purpose cash as opposed to the traditional “stuff” or sector specific vouchers.
In line with GB commitments we would hope to see a move towards donors away from project-type iontervension and towards delivering un-earmarked core contributions to agencies. In this case donors will be unable to specify cash at transaction level - it will just be a core contribution to an agency which is well captured within the existing IATI structure. BUT assuming the necessary infrastructure/ support/ guidance is then in place to enable the reporting of agencies throughout the delivery we would see the delivery of cash at this level. This mapping throughout the delivery chain could be a way of measuring the commitment towards localisation… a potential three-in-one win?
This once again highlights the importance of ensuring reporting to IATI standards throughout the delivery chain.
Aid-type is already available at both activity (<default-aid-type>) and transaction (<aid-type>) level. If a vocabulary was added it would be added to both elements.
Isn’t the modality describing the ultimate type of intervention - not the means of transaction?
I still think we should be working jointly with WP-STAT on this, IF there is a realistic chance of a positive and timely outcome.
Not the type of intervention hence - my comment above. Only in later levels of the delivery chain does the funding modality and type of intervention become more closely aligned.
Agreed. I assume the Secretariat has approached DCD already?
I would suggest that the delivery modality belongs properly in the last-mile reporting. In an ideal world, if GAC or DFID provides $5m for a program, we should be able to trace down to the individual activities on the ground and calculate how many of them had a modality of “cash” or “vouchers” rather than in-kind.
Since the world is not ideal, unfortunately, that’s not always going to work—we don’t get enough of field-level/last-mile reporting in IATI—so donors might need to identify modality higher up the chain (where it does not properly belong) just to be able to monitor their GB commitments.
Following the call to seek consensus on the humanitarian proposals that took place on 5th September 2017 two actions to progress this proposal were identified.
As current thinking is that the reporting of cash etc. can most likely to be handled via the content of codelists, this proposal will continue to be progressed outside of the Standard Upgrade process as non-embedded codelists can be updated at any time.
As this topic is now being progressed outside of the v2.03 Standard Upgrade it has now been moved into the Non-embedded Codelist Amendment category.
Also adding here in my a summary of my last communications with the DAC in which they had indicated that they that had asked the DAC members to position themselves on the better way to track cash-based operations. There was a general opposition to introduce another marker, so two choices were proposed :
A cash flag : The project has (value 1) or has not (value 0) a cash component. (because capturing all the subtleties of different cash modalities would require a more elaborated marker, for which there is no appetite)
A keyword : project with a cash component would use the world “cash” in the project description, which allows us to make a research by keyword.
For unrelated reasons the overall proposal was not accepted during the last WP-STAT? As a result, my understanding is that the proposal, will now follow a written procedure : the revised proposal will be sent out and DAC members will have 3 weeks to send objections. If there is no objections, the proposal will be accepted and the new codes, new cash flag/keyword will be operational for the 2018 data set, available end 2019?
I was therefore also wondering if any of the members of the IATI community who are also involved with the WP-STAT are aware of any update on this? @OJ_ @Herman @theo.sande
Hi Wendy,
the idea has been discussed once as a loose idea. No further progress so far and the next WP STAT will be held only next year. Major issue is that the bilateral donors (DAC members) are only very rarely deciding on whether an activity has a cash component or not. These decisions are mostly taken by the implementing partners. Since many of them are either not reporting or only partially reporting to DAC, the quality of the data on this element will be extremely poor.
For these reasons, IATI might be a much more appropriate place to set a standard (provided we take full responsibility as the source of the element).
An update on progress with the Tracking Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) Working Group and a proposal for a new AidType Vocabulary has now been made on IATI discuss in here.