Dear all, as you know IATI recommends OECD DAC-5 digit Purpose Codes. The UN has also adopted this vocabulary for the UN Data Cube.
UNIDO, being a specialized agency focused on Industrialization, has historically used ISIC (https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesm/seriesm_4rev4e.pdf, Section/Division) but that’s a specialized vocabulary (for industry).
For the time being we adopted OECD DAC-3 and reported all our activities as ‘321’ (Industry). It minimally works but it’s too high level as within the Industry Theme we work with very different initiatives, and some may even be in other groups.
We would like to transition to OECD DAC-5 but we need to map our existing classification. Is anybody aware of any “official/generally accepted” mapping of ISIC to OECD DAC-5 and vice-versa? Alternatively, could you indicate another suitable forum for this question? We asked our statistics department but they have no exposure to OECD DAC, they only work with ISIC and are not familiar with any mapping. Thank you! Ana Paula
Hey @apnishio, as far as I understand, CRS was originally derived from ISIC, so it should be possible to map at least somewhat. I wonder if it is worth reaching out to the OECD DAC to ask them if they have a list?
Also: I can see that the Joined Up Data Standards project did some mapping between ISIC and DAC codes, but I am unsure how complete a mapping it is and how to extract the mapping e.g. into a spreadsheet – I wonder if @IATI-techteam can help?
Thank you, this is useful information. I do not have contacts in OECD though, and OECD is not a Member of IATI. Does IATI, or anybody in this forum, has a channel with OECD? I can and will go to their website and ask a question but most likely it won’t get anywhere. Best regards, Ana Paula
@apnishio I am just sending an email to our tech contact at the OECD and will copy you and @markbrough in.
Sharing the response we received from the OECD DAC.
In the process of establishing the reporting instructions for TOSSD, we analysed the feasibility of reporting in both ISIC and CRS classification and the relationship between the two. In doing so, we built a “draft correspondence table” noticing that the conversion from ISIC to CRS is simpler than vice versa.
The paper and the excel files are here.
These are public documents, and we welcome comments and suggestions. These of course are far from being "official or generally accepted”, they have not been tested converting any real data, but can be a starting point. Please share with us any advancement you encounter in this area, as it might be useful to refine these tables and to build a robust conversion system for the TOSSD reporters that wish to report in ISIC.