Information and data you can't publish (exclusions)

You may be unable or unwilling to publish certain information to comply with a contract, policy or regulation, or to protect staff working in a sensitive area, for example.

For each case you should decide what information about an activity is fine to publish, and what details need to be excluded. These might include location, sector or financial information. In some cases, an entire activity may have to be left out.

It is useful for users of your data to know what might be missing from your IATI files, so you should outline this in a public exclusion policy.

Why exclude data

You may need to exclude some data you’ve committed to publish so that no harm comes to your organisation’s work or staff. Or you might need to exclude data temporarily because your organisation can’t capture the required information.

Bear in mind that your default position should always be to publish as much as you can.

Examples of why you might need to exclude data include the following:

• your activities are considered illegal or otherwise unacceptable by states or societies in your field, for example in human rights, gender or governance activities
• you’re working in sensitive geographical areas and it presents a risk to publish the exact location of your work
• you need to protect commercial information
• your grant contract restricts which details you can make public.

Creating an exclusion policy

If you’re excluding data from your IATI records you need to publish an exclusion policy. This details how you decide what information not to publish. It should explain the criteria and process you use to decide. You should also link your exclusion policy to your IATI publisher account by putting its URL in the 'Description' field in the IATI Registry.

You should also add information, under ‘Field exclusions’ in the IATI Registry, about the recommended elements in the standard you can’t use – and why not.

When developing a policy on exclusions, consider:

• Does your organisation have any existing freedom of information or other policies that could stop some information being published?
• Is it subject to any laws that may limit your IATI publishing?
• Does your organisation have any contracts that stop you from publishing information?
• For information you can’t publish, do you know which IATI data elements need to be excluded?
• How will you decide if any entire activities need to be excluded?

For further guidance on creating an exclusion policy, see:

• Bond Guidance - Developing an Open Information Policy: Guidance for NGOs

If you receive funding from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office or the Dutch or Belgian governments please see Donors' reporting requirements, for their guidance on exclusion policies.

For an example of a non-government organisation’s exclusion policy see:

• Oxfam GB’s Open Information Policy guidance (and see the section on what information Oxfam might not publish)
• United Nations Development Programme's Information Disclosure Policy (and see section IV confirming the exclusions for UNDP)