IATI progress in 2017
Over the last year, our initiative has made significant progress working towards our key priority of improving the use of IATI data, as well as increasing the numbers of publishers and upgrading the Standard.
Improving data use
A new Data Use Task Force has been established and has worked with the Secretariat and members to develop a comprehensive strategy to involve the entire IATI membership and community can play their part in achieving our mission of increasing data use to help achieve sustainable development outcomes.
During 2017, the governments of Somalia, Mali and Guinea announced plans to integrate IATI data into their Aid Information Management Systems to inform decision-making.
At two IATI sessions held at the Africa Open Data Conference (Ghana, July), there was keen interest from journalists and civil society organisations, particularly from sub-national groups, for using IATI data to increase accountability.
Reaching 600 publishers
Over 100 new organisations published their development and humanitarian spending to IATI in 2017. Data is now available from more than 600 donor governments, multilateral agencies, foundations, NGOs and private sector organisations.
10 new members
Over the last year, 10 new organisations joined IATI as members. These include the governments of Italy, Somalia, Mali, and Guinea, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, International Finance Corporation (IFC), International Organization for Migration (IOM), Oxfam America, Oxfam Novib and Plan International. Joining IATI shows a clear commitment to transparency and open data in the development and humanitarian sectors, and these new members now have an important stake in the initiative’s governance.
Upgrading the Standard
Over the last year, IATI’s Technical Team has worked with our dedicated community on upgrading the Standard.
After detailed consultation, version 2.03 of the IATI Standard is being finalised and is due to be released early next year. Amongst many important changes, the upgrade aims to improve the quality and usability of data on humanitarian assistance and the results of activities published to IATI.
Thriving community
In March 137 participants from 36 countries attended our largest ever Technical Advisory Group (TAG), in Dar es Salaam. The meeting was opened by Deputy Permanent Secretary (Public Finance Management), Amina Shaaban, from the Government of Tanzania. As this TAG meeting was the first to take place in a partner country, IATI was able to engage and raise awareness amongst a new audience of data users.
This year also saw the introduction of the ‘miniTAG’ – a small-scale face-to-face meetup of IATI people to discuss a particular topic to increase, improve or use IATI data. Since the idea was developed in March, members of our TAG community have put in tremendous effort to host four miniTAG meetings in different countries and on various themes. Topics covered include traceability, machine learning, improving IATI data on agriculture and food security, geocoding and improving CRS codelists.
Priorities in 2018
In 2018, IATI will focus on implementing the new Data Use Strategy and make important decisions on future institutional arrangements for the initiative. Next year will mark 10 years since IATI was launched in 2008 at the third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra and we look forward to celebrating the tremendous commitment made to this initiative over the years from our members’, the wider TAG community and the international development and humanitarian sectors.