What is IATI?

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) aims to make information about aid spending easier to find, use and compare.

IATI was launched in September 2008 in Accra, Ghana. It is a multi-stakeholder initiative that has brought together donors, developing country governments, civil society and aid information experts to agree on a common, open, international standard for publishing more, and better, information about aid. The Standard was agreed in February 2011, and a variety of assistance-providing and implementing organisations have now started publishing data on their projects in line with the Standard.

The Standard sets guidelines for publishing information about aid spending. It does not create a new database. IATI will not replace work already being done by organisations such as the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to produce statistics about past aid flows and aid activities. Instead, IATI builds on, and goes beyond the standards and definitions that have already been agreed.

The majority of information within the IATI Standard refers to activity-level data, although a set of guidelines also exist for organisational-level information.

For more information and background about the Initiative, please visit the Aid Transparencysite.