Hi all,
As you are no doubt aware, a new IATI DataStore is in the process of being built. This topic has been raised to update and inform the community about what will happen with files in version 1 of the Standard when the new DataStore is launched.
The IATI standard has undergone a number of upgrade processes with one major upgrade - moving to Version 2 - back in 2015. Version 1 contains outdated rules and guidance on publishing development and humanitarian data on resources and results. The Members’ Assembly and consequently the Technical Advisory Group made the decision to deprecate IATI v1 by 30th of June 2019 (see this post).
In the context of developing the new IATI Datastore, the Tech team suggested (see this discussion thread) that a one one-off upload of v1 files will take place, after which v1 files would not be ‘allowed in’. In April 2019 the IATI tech team met with the vendors of the new datastore and validator service (Zimmerman and Zimmerman along with Data4Development) and scoped out how the two systems will integrate. Following investigation of various options, the teams came to the conclusion that it will not be possible to do a one off upload of v1 files. We will share more information on the system integration of the two products later in May with an update on the project timeline.
Analysis of publishers using v1:
Following this confirmation, the technical team engaged in analysing the makeup of organisationswhich still have at least one file published in v1 of the Standard, to understand how publishers might be affected.
Please see the full list of v1 publishers and summary stats in this sheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/156WZ9j8X8NzKzCJCyVuJSHCAluk2LvhDIfKkuC_kI5g/edit?usp=sharing). The headline stats from the analysis listed below show that the majority of v1 files have not been updated in the past 12 months and the majority are organisation files:
-
201 publishers have at least one file in v1. Out of these:
-
81 (40%) have all of their files in v1 of the Standard
-
120 (60%) have at least one file in v2 of the Standard
-
61 (30%) have ‘active’ Activity files - updated their data in the last 12 months.
-
140 (70%) have activity files that have not been updated in the last year
-
-
132 publishers have only a single file in v1. Out of these:
-
41 (31 %) have updated their Activity file in the last 12 months.
-
83 (62%) of the publishers with a single file in v1 have an Organisation file.
-
107 (81%) out of the 132 publishers with a single file in v1 are using AidStream (including both activity and organisation files)
-
Tech team’s support for v1 publishers:
Since the decision to deprecate v1 of the IATI standard, the technical team has been in touch with all 201 publishers to notify them of the timeline of deprecation and the impact on tools when keeping their files in v1. We will continue engaging with publishers and take the following actions:
-
Continue engaging directly with the 20 publishers listed as ‘targeted publishers’, including IATI members and those with a high number of files who still have at least one file in v1. We have been liasisng with them over the last 6 months and all except two are actively engaging with us about their transition plans. Some are very close to fully transitioning to v2.
-
Directly contact the 52 ‘active’ publishers who have updated their data in the last year and have at least one file in v1 of the Standard. This is to follow up on an email that was sent to all v1 publishers in November and again in January, informing them of our recommendation to transition. We would again offer to provide 1-2-1 support to help them move their data to v2.
-
Continue to support other publishers who are getting in contact following the bulk email.
What happens to data that remains in v1?
While we hope to help to ensure that as much v1 data is transferred to v2 as possible, it is inevitable that we will be left with a number of v1 datasets. For instance, while we hope to hear back from the publishers we get in touch with, there will be cases where we receive no response.
-
All v1 data will continue to be accessible via the ‘old’ IATI Datastore until the end of 2019.
-
All v1 data will continue to be available via the IATI Registry, despite not being consumed by the new Datastore.
-
D-portal will also continue to utilise v1 data in the immediate future; the Technical Team are currently looking into potential impacts of this.