Important notice:
Organisations involved in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic are encouraged to publish data on their spending and activities using the IATI Standard. See COVID-19 IATI publishing guidance.

Discover how to access data by reading Guidance: Accessing and Using IATI COVID-19 Data

2.01 Headlines

The changes / additions to IATI Standard for version 2.01 represent a number of actions for those publishing and using IATI data.

This page provides a headline checklist of the core “breaking” changes, linking to further guidance and information. Alongside these, there are several changes to elements and codelists - this document serves to provide a starter point.

Contents

Mandatory changes

For those moving from version 1.0x to 2.01 of the IATI Standard, the following changes must be observed.

Standard wide

The following changes are “breaking” changes from 1.0x and 2.01, in both the IATI Activity and IATI Organisation standards:

Change 1.0x 2.01
Element Order Elements could be presented in any order. Elements must be presented in a strict order in both the Activity and Organisation standards.
Mandatory Fields There were a limited number of mandatory elements. There are more mandatory elements in both the Activity and Organisation standard.
Using free text Free text could be added to any element. The way in which free text is reported has been changed to standardise multilingual reporting. This requires formatting changes to all text fields. In addition, this impacts on the ways in which multilingual translations are handled across the standard..
Descriptive text for codes Fields defined by codes allow for accompanying descriptions. With the exception of countries and regions, the descriptions associated with codes can no longer be reported .
Date formatting Date formatting was less strict. Date formatting is strictly observed .. A date must be a expressed in a valid xsd:date format. Datetimes should be a valid xsd:dateTime.
Organisation Identifier The organisation identifier used for the publishing organisation was not validated. The organisation identifier used for the publishing organisation must be prefixed with a valid Organisation Registration Agency code .

Activity standard

The following “breaking” changes apply specifically to the IATI Activity Standard

Change 1.0x 2.01
Language Neutral Codelists The codes for Organisation role; Type of Activity Date; Transaction Type; Sector Vocabulary; Gazetteer Agency were alpha characters, derived from English language words. The codes for Organisation role; Type of Activity Date; Transaction Type; Sector Vocabulary; Gazetteer Agency have to be changed to numeric, making them language neutral.

Organisation standard

The following “breaking” changes apply specifically to the IATI Organisation Standard

Change 1.0x 2.01
Renamed Element A mandatory element named iati-identifier was in use. The iati-identifier element is now organisation-identifier. This must be renamed.