What data should I publish?

In your IATI publishing you will need to give details about the development and humanitarian work you do as well as about your organisation. There are many details you can add about your activities and your organisation, including financial, contextual and results information.

IATI is not just about publishing data on official development assistance (ODA) – ideally you should publish details of any activity to do with development cooperation or humanitarian work.

We suggest you start by publishing the mandatory and recommended details (in the form of elements) and then increase the amount of detail as you become more familiar with using IATI.

The IATI Reference pages provide the full framework showing how to set out your data. Also see this guide on how to use IATI Reference pages. But with most publishing tools you won’t need to use these pages.

The two types of datafile

You need to create two types of datafile: an Organisation File and an Activity File.

Organisation

All organisation information is published in an Organisation File.

This is the XML file you create to hold the details about your organisation, for example its name, its IATI Organisation Identifier (IATI Org ID), future-looking budgets, total expenditure and links to related documents such as annual reports and strategy documents. Budgets can be broken down by country and by individual organisation.

The IATI Organisation Standard provides the framework for how each detail should be reported. The Organisation information page explains what this should include.

Activity

All activity information is published in an Activity File. This is the XML file you create to hold details of the activities your organisation carries out. You need to describe each activity – for example: where it is based, how it is being financed, and what the outcomes are.

The IATI Activity Standard provides the framework for how each detail should be reported.

Each activity is identified by a unique activity ID, known as an IATI identifier. This is formed of your IATI Org ID + an internal reference.

For more about what an activity is and which activity details you should publish, see:

• How is an ‘activity’ defined?
• Creating IATI identifiers
• Key activity information to publish
• All the activity information you can publish

Updating your files

Once you’ve committed to publish to IATI, it is most important that you update your data files regularly and in line with the frequency specified in your organisation's IATI Registry account. Key points to follow are:

• Data should be added to existing activities. Don’t create additional new files that only contain the most recent information. Publish all information relating to one activity under that activity in the same file.
• Each activity must have a unique activity ID (IATI identifier). Don’t publish the same activity ID/IATI identifier in multiple places.
• Data should be cumulative. If you’re publishing every quarter, each activity should include data for the quarter being reported along with existing data from previous quarters. This will also enable you to amend your existing data as necessary.
• Don’t ever remove or delete data. Once published, your data should remain permanently available. But the IATI standard recognises that at certain points publishers may need to correct incorrect data or merge activities. If you need to merge activities, you must ensure all the information is transferred across and nothing is lost.