New IATI website main topics (+ sitemap)

#1

IATI (tech)team is working on the new website as I understand.

During the #iatidev workshop held in Manchester this week we were in part talking about some of the elements topics currently not explicitly stated on the IATI website. I believe we had some similar ideas on what is (kind of) essential to show next to the mandatory (menu)items (what is the standard, documentation etc.) on the next IATI website.

Suggestions to take into consideration:

  • SHOWCASE: placeholder of all IATI things outside of the official IATI realm, such as: tools, portals, websites, documentation, training material, etc.etc. - This could serve as a one-stop to all. Very much missed and very much needed. Point user to showcase, provide high level description of what it is + external linking.

  • SUPPLIERS: placeholder of IATI specific suppliers: advocates, trainers, companies, etc.etc. This provides third parties with a list of all types of experts ranging from individuals to companies.

I am wondering if we a as a community could help IATI in providing input on the mentioned suggestions and if it makes sense to create an initial sitemap to structure this.

It would be a shame if this get missed for the current opportunity and we observe this after delivery. Anxious to hear how other think and curious to learn if an actual sitemap exists.

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#2

Bumping this UP. If we are not discussing the matter here, then we will all agree to whatever comes out on the revamped IATI website. So no after the meal discussion folks!

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#3

Agree, Siem. Thanks for bumping.

What do you think the best way to source this detail is? Sitemap may be the last step, but something like a Google Doc to list out the content?

We could let the onus rest of the owners/creators of this content to add it to the list (which would be slower/require more prodding), or we could let the community point to everything that we know about (this could be quicker/more comprehensive - in fact, thereā€™s some other recent threads/Google Docs that do a nice job of listing out things like CSV2IATI-esque tools.)

Buuuuut Iā€™m slightly worried about expectation setting, i.e. ā€œI saw this on the IATI site, I clicked through the ā€˜now leaving aidtransparency.netā€™ message without reading, and now I want organization X to respond to my request for support or question about their stuff, and if they donā€™t do a sufficient job, Iā€™ll be sad and blame IATI.ā€

ā€¦but to be clear, I think we should do this, we just need to clear it with the orgs/tools we list.

This seems less complex (who doesnā€™t want free advertising?), but probably should be the duty of the providers themselves to advertise their own services, i.e. I can flag ODS as a consultant in a Google Doc, but they would need to spell out what services they do/donā€™t want to advertise.

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#4

Oh, and (forgive our website, itā€™s going to be updated/upgraded soon) at the bottom of this page thereā€™s an IATI Data Tool Inventory that I think @laia_grino or someone else put together a year or two ago. So thereā€™s a headstart on a list, although some of that is official IATI stuff.

#5

A couple of ideas ā€¦

A shared braindump of what does and doesnā€™t work
A wish list
Volunteers for user testing

We have just started work with a new UX team and will share progress and request feedback and input as we go

#6

Can we be clear that there are currently two main IATI websites that provide contextual information (Iā€™m leaving the Registry and Discuss aside for now, as I dont think they are to be ā€œrewrittenā€):

  • aidtransparency.net - a Wordpress with pages, news and documents
  • iatistandard.org - which is a static site, generated out of the documentation controlled in various GitHub repositories

Iā€™m unclear as to what the proposal for a ā€œnew websiteā€ is. Is it to replace the two, or revamp the former? I think we have to be very careful about the schema-generated documentation, Whilst that might not be the most ā€œfront-facingā€ of content, itā€™s very useful for those of us who are in the standard most days.

A good (imho) setup to look at is Open Contracting: https://www.open-contracting.org/ - in terms of how narrative content (news case studies) is the main offer but the documentation for the standard is clearly signposted, leading to a static site: http://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/en/ (@bjwebb and others can explain the code behind that, but thatā€™s probably too much of a tangent for this thread)

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#7

We regard the reference section of iatistandard.org as dynamic, not static as it version specific and generated directly from the schema.

We regard the guidance section of iatistandard.org as static as it is not version specific.

Phase One of ā€œnewā€ is to rationalise and revamp aidtransparency.net and the static portion of iatistandard.org

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#8

[Inner conflict: contribute to the bystander effect and possibly witness a good idea wither on the Discuss vine, OR take action, start a Google Doc, and risk being seen as the point person for another thingā€¦oh alright then!]

Go nuts, kids!

Braindump of IATI Resources (Google Doc)

If your thing is not included there, itā€™s because I ran out of time. By the way, half of what I just added to that doc already exists here: http://iatistandard.org/202/guidance/how-to-publish/select-publishing-tool/ - but included anyway for comprehensivenessā€™ sake.

#9

hi Reid, thanks for taking this a step further. When I mentioned SHOWCASE and SUPPLIERS, I was thinking about them as subspaces (main or submenu items, whatever) on https://www.aidtransparency.net/. It does contain a menu Resources now, but that differs from what SHOWCASE and SUPPLIERS should be. I guess the rationale around SUPPLIERS would be to have a list of either an expertise range (data cleaning to BI let say) and filter accordingly. Or perhaps just a list of the usual suspects we know have an IATI background / trackrecord? The userstory here is to offer a user a list of suppliers who are able to either consult, analyse, design, build or provide existing services that are specifically IATI. Makes sense?

For the SHOWCASE part the userstory would be to provide the user a list of projects (BI, dataportals, etc) per project: this way users can clearly see data beyond the magic realm of XML and can see how they potentially could use IATI themselves.

I think the the doc Reid has setup is a good start, but I think we should relate from either the SHOWCASE and SUPPLIERS from a sitemap like perspective :fleur_de_lis: @reidmporter ok if I warp your items in your doc around SHOWCASE and SUPPLIERS?

#edit - re-arranged that doc @reidmporter

#10

Yes please. I do not want to become the owner and sole editor of yet another Google Doc (which I have a bad habit of doing;-) Itā€™s open to all, please feel free to edit and move around!

#11

Hi @bill_anderson just to confirm ā€“ are we talking about merging aidtransparency.net and iatistandard.org ? I know there have been a lot of concerns raised over the years about the user-friendliness of iatistandard.org in particular. Feels like the whole site could really benefit from a heavy dose of restructuring / information architecture / etc, but I donā€™t know if this is what is planned. Revealing translations (e.g. codelists to French) where available in the underlying data would also be a great help.

Can you share some more details on the plans? Is there a concept note / ToR or something? Would be great to know how the community can feed into this website revamp.

#12

Took that injunction quite literally and moved things around to create a specific data use section, as almost everything so far was about publishing.

Since anyone using IATI data quickly runs into problems understanding the data itself (What on earth does ā€œpost-completionā€ mean? What are policy markers?), I added a ā€œReferenceā€ part (probably not the best title though); it should point to the actual owners of the various definitions, codelists etc, in particular the DAC.

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#13

Eventually all sites and services will be merged but yes, phase one involves aidtransparency.net and iatistandard,org.

We are currently working with a UX agency - pulling from the user research done over the past year (which was started at the TAG). An initial prototype will be shared for consultation at the end of March, a beta at the end of April, and live by the MA in June.

We are seeking volunteers from all corners of the IATI community to assist in user testing. Phone lines are open ā€¦

#14

Great to hear, thanks for the clarification / update Bill. Happy to help contribute how I can!

#15

Just want to flag this, as I think some people in the community have a different point of view:

@bill_anderson talks about how the content is governed, which is a good point. However, the term ā€œstatic site generationā€ is very common around our circles. I dont (honest!) want to get into semantics, but just flagging that the terms static vs dynamic could have half the TAG thinking one thing, the other half something else! It might be important to clarify future directions therefore.

Thereā€™s a really useful description of static sites on this blog. Alongside a metaphor, it also highlights some of the pros and cons of the approach, which I think are evident to us already.

Weā€™ve also tried to document the static site approach in our open data standards lab project.