Tech Paper: Hierarchies

Standard Management 2.03 Decimal Upgrade Discussions
#21

Interesting discussion! I added a few comments in the document in defence of hierarchies :slight_smile:

Basically, I think they are very useful for interpreting / understanding the data. In the Bangladesh work we’ve used them quite a lot. On the publisher side, I think they also allow data to be accurately expressed while also making it possible to publish more detailed data by publishing subcomponents of larger programs.

At the same time, we definitely need better advice on ways of handling hierarchies from the user perspective. It would also be good if some of the major tools that exist for exploring the data (particularly d-portal) handled this better.

Hierarchies - related-activity definition (included 2.03)
#22

@bill_anderson Yes, I think this rule will clarify the handling of fund hierarchies.

I am not sure about the rule “provided that there is no double counting within the hierarchical group as a whole.” It might be interesting information to track the outgoing flows from hierarchy level 1 to hierarchy level 2. E.g. when want to answer questions as “How much is programmed by the fund manager (=actually allocated to specific implementing organizations) but is not yet disbursed to the implementing organizations.”.

So the double counting should i.m.o. be dealt with at the moment of presentation and not on the moment of publishing the data. How you deal with it is depending on your use-case. I agree with @markbrough that the IATI consuming tools should take care of this. The data need i.m.o. to represent the real world business process as close as possible?

#23

The current usage of hierarchies across 500+ publishers is as follows:
43 publishers are currently using 2 levels of hierarchies
6 publishers are currently using 3 hierarchies
2 publishers are using the highest number of 4 hierarchies

Do we know who are the 6 and 2 using >2 hierarchies?

Agreeing best practice - Using Hierarchies
#24

@JohnAdams There is a view on the IATI dashboard that shows hierarchy use. Clicking on the column heading also enables ordering of the data which is useful.