IATI Registry

The IATI Registry stores information on every organisation publishing IATI data. These organisations are referred to as ‘IATI publishers’. IATI publishers register their accounts on the IATI Registry and publish links to their IATI data files there. The Registry provides a central point to access all IATI data files and import them into IATI data-use tools.

What information can I find in the IATI Registry?

The IATI Registry holds metadata about each IATI publisher and the files they have published in the IATI XML format. The files themselves are stored in different places across the web.

On the homepage of the Registry, you can see the total number of organisations that have both registered with IATI and published at least one data file. This number automatically updates to reflect the growth in IATI publishers.

The Registry metadata also provides a searchable list of IATI publishers with their contact information, the location of where their IATI data files are hosted and the date of when they first published data.

The IATI Registry contains sections for information on publishers and all of the data published to IATI.

• Publishers - you can see and download a full list of all organisations that publish IATI data, including each publisher’s name, IATI organisation identifier, organisation type and the number of data files they have published. If you click on an individual publisher, you will see a list of their data files (both organisation files and activity files), with some metadata about each file, such as when it was last updated. To understand what information is contained within IATI organisation and activity data files see: what data to publish.
• Data - you can search IATI datasets by publisher name, publisher country, organisation type and recipient country. These are the metadata fields to describe a publisher’s organisation and the data they publish. The search result will give you links to their raw data files, which are provided in XML format.

How do I get data from the IATI registry?

How to find a publisher’s contact details

Each IATI publisher should display an email address on the IATI Registry and may also include a link to their website. To find these details, click on the required publisher’s page and the email address will be displayed on the right of the screen under ‘Contact’. There should also be a link to their website which often provides more contact information for the organisation.

Some organisations also include a specific contact email address for each activity. An activity provides data on individual projects or single units of development and humanitarian work. Any contact information for an activity can be found within its IATI data file. Users can find the specific activity on d-portal and then select ‘View source XML’ beneath the activity ‘Project title’. In the source XML you can use CTRL + F to search for the word ‘email’.

How to access IATI activity and organisation data

The IATI Registry is your single point of access for all links to IATI data files. You can use this tool to find the IATI file you want to download and do so in XML format or CSV format. More technically adept users can utilise our Registry API to access the metadata, including the URL for each published IATI file.

Accessing individual datasets

When you are looking at the links to an IATI data file on a publisher’s page, you have four options.

1. View Metadata: this allows you to view additional information about the file, such as the file type, recipient country for the file’s activities and when it was last updated.
2. Download: this will download the raw XML file.
3. Preview: this allows you to quickly preview an IATI publisher’s data by presenting it in an easy-to-read format. It lists each top-level element on a separate line, and allows you to expand the section to see the data it contains.
4. CSV: this allows you to convert individual IATI activity files from XML into CSV format. You can select one of three options and then download the CSV file to use the data for the organisation you have selected. The three options are:
   • simple activity summary (CSV)
   • full activity data (CSV)
   • all transactions (CSV)

Accessing all datasets via the Registry metadata API

You can use the IATI Registry API to programmatically query all the metadata held on the Registry, create and manage datasets, and perform a wide variety of other tasks. To find out more please visit the Registry API documentation.

API for XML data

IATI offers several APIs. If you need an API to work directly with the IATI XML data, you can use the Data API with the IATI Datastore.

How do I publish my data on the IATI Registry?

The first step is to create a publisher account on the IATI Registry and get this approved by the IATI Secretariat. Please see How to register with IATI for detailed instructions.

Once your account is approved, you can add individual data files to the IATI Registry manually or by bulk upload using a CSV file. Or, if you are using a publishing tool to publish IATI data, there may be an option to automatically publish your files directly from the tool to the Registry. Please see How to publish your data on the IATI Registry for instructions.

Can I get my organisation’s publishing system to interact with the IATI Registry?

You can set up a system to interact with the IATI Registry using its own API, which is an implementation of the CKAN API. For details, see the full API documentation.

If you want your system to publish datasets on behalf of multiple organisations, you will need permission from the IATI Secretariat to do so. For further details and advice, please send a query to the IATI Secretariat.

Who maintains the IATI Registry and how can I contact them?

The IATI Secretariat is responsible for maintenance of the IATI Registry and works directly with Derilinx, a leading provider of CKAN development and hosting, which supplies and manages the Registry.

If you have any questions or notice any issues, please contact the IATI Secretariat.