@Herman thanks for the clarification. One thing: it might prove difficult to completely align the DAC and IATI definitions, precisely because the former is very donor-centric language.
The IATI definition of commitment is pretty much aligned with the DAC’s. Let’s not fix something that isn’t broken.
The problem is in the budget element stating that total budget should be reported as a commitment. That is where we should focus.
We could say instead that total budget can be derived from the sum of annual budgets (keeping in mind whether the budget status of indicative or committed), or create a new “total budget” element to provide the overall value.
I may be totally wrong, but I don’t see this change in the budget element description as being a breaking change.
1 Like
I agree and I don’t think it is a breaking change.
I would add to guidance (rather then the definition) that the budgets typically (but not necessarily) reflect indicatively how the total commitment may be distributed across the lifetime of the activity.
No
We can still apply this method because it is trying to be fair to the scoring of activities that appear to be nearly fully disbursed. Just because we are saying that the sum of commitments is not necessarily equal to the sum of budgets over the liftime of an activity doesn’t mean to say that it most cases it is.
A commitment is a legal obligation. A budget is an indicative prediction. They are apples and oranges. That doesn’t stop them being used to estimate fruit arithmetic.
1 Like