March Technical Advisory Group meeting in Oxford, UK

The IATI Technical Advisory Group will hold its third meeting on:

Monday 22 March and Tuesday 23 March at The Queen’s College, Oxford.

Some 66 participants have registered to attend, with a good cross-section from partner countries, donors, CSOs, and expert advisers. We are at full the capacity of the meeting facilities, so if anyone else wishes to participate, it would have to be by teleconference (contact [email protected]).

The meeting will have a mix of plenary and breakout groups to maximise discussion (see below). Papers for the meeting were issued on 14th March.

On Monday there will be a quick overview of progress since the last meeting and plans for 2010. During the rest of the day the plenary session will discuss the detailed definitions and data formats proposed for the IATI standard, based on work since December.

On Tuesday four simultaneous breakout groups will allow for in-depth discussion of the other work-streams.

• One group will continue the dialogue on improving accessibility to aid information that was started at the IATI conference in October.
• A technical workshop will discuss options for the technical architecture and support needed for implementation of IATI.
• Another group will discuss next steps with the Code of Conduct
• Another group will work with DAC WP-STAT to support donors for the implementation of IATI.

There will also be breakout discussions with the six pilot countries to talk about arrangements for the pilots to test the IATI concepts and with experts on links between IATI and country financial management systems.

The meeting is being held on the margins of the AidData Conference, which will provide participants with the opportunity to engage in some policy debate around transparency on Monday evening (Public Panel Discussion on Corruption, Transparency and the Future of Aid in the 21st Century), and on Tuesday morning in the launch of the AidData database – a possible model for an aggregator of IATI information.