Finding results in d-portal

We spoke to d-portal developer Shi Hussain on recent improvements made on results data for development activities published to IATI.

What is results data?
At its most basic, results data includes a title, description and an indicator of a development activity published to IATI. The indicator helps describe an outcome, for example the number of pregnant women receiving antenatal care.

Why is it important to display results in d-portal?
IATI’s online search platform d-portal allows anyone in the world with internet access to view data published by over 500 development and humanitarian organisations.

By including results data, we’re helping users to discover the difference, or impact, that development cooperation and humanitarian assistance has made. This is important for transparency, accountability and learning which activities/projects are best to allocate resources to in the future.

What’s new?
We’ve made it easier for our users to access and view results data, if they are published for activities. Here are a couple of examples:

Results data for project on promoting women’s empowerment and rights in Ghana, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Pakistan

Results data for project on the sustainable management of agriculture research

Let’s talk tech – how did you develop this?
We use a SAVi activity viewer on d-portal. SAVi displays complex-looking IATI xml data in a format that is easier to read and digest in a browser. To achieve this, we try to understand the context of the data being used and lay it out to make the most sense to the casual user.

For example, the image below shows how the following IATI data is displayed by SAVi by  d-portal.

Here you’ll see an incomplete progress bar indicating that the project is still ongoing. You’ll also notice the green box indicating that the project is successful in reaching its target; a yellow box indicates otherwise, as seen in the images above.

Who was involved in helping to make these changes?
During a four-day Open Ag Tool workshop, many experts gave us guidance on the best way to approach results data.  Many thanks to Nadeja Mandrescu and Taryn Davis from Development Gateway, Andy Lulham from Publish What You Fund, Nick Hamlin from Global Giving and Reid Porter from InterAction for their input.

Can we expect more changes to d-portal?
IATI is continually working on more ways to ensure people can access the data they want through d-portal. Please share any suggestions you have via GitHub or email [email protected].