How do I use IATI data?

IATI data comes from a wide range of organisations and covers more than one million development and humanitarian aid activities. Find out how to access and make use of this wealth of information.

‘Some online tools visualise the data in charts or maps while others allow you to download spreadsheets’

There are many tools you can use to access IATI data. Different tools are designed for users with different technical abilities and for different uses. Use the information here to help decide which tools might be right for you.

Non-technical tools for searching, visualising and downloading IATI data

There are several free online tools for accessing IATI data which you can use without any special expertise. These tools differ in the number of fields you use to filter searches and how the data is displayed. For example, some online tools visualise the data in charts or maps while others allow you to download Excel spreadsheets or CSV files.

Some tools enable you to see all IATI data, while others are designed to extract only certain information for specific purposes.

Most tools are free to use. If a tool requires payment, refer to the service provider for details.

Tools built and managed by IATI

IATI has built tools that provide access to all IATI data. These are:

d-portal is a development portal that allows you to explore and visualise IATI data on development and humanitarian aid activities. d-portal refreshes daily and takes data directly from the IATI Registry. New publishers should appear on d-portal on the Monday after their first publication.

The IATI Datastore provides access to data published by organisations according to the IATI Standard on their resources and results. It's Query Builder enables users to build queries across 32 different elements of the IATI Standard. Users can select options through drop-down and freetext filters.

This tool enables download of simple Excel-formatted data on commitments, disbursements and expenditures, as well as forward-looking budgets, presented simply by country and region. It is a tool created by the IATI Secretariat as an interim measure to support simple access to the kinds of data requested most frequently by IATI partner country governments. Learning from this tool will inform IATI's next steps to develop a new data portal that will simplify access to all IATI data for all users.

Tools built and managed by third parties

IATI data is open source, so anyone is able to freely use the data and build tools that use IATI data. With some third-party tools you can see all IATI data; others use IATI data to focus on specific themes or topics in the international development and humanitarian sectors.

Some governments and organisations have built their own online tools that showcase their data.

If you have built a tool for accessing and using IATI data please let us know so that we can add them to the list.

Integrate IATI data into government financial systems

Governments of developing countries can reduce the burden of data collection by accessing IATI data to find many of the details they need in one place.

Some governments, such as Madagascar and Senegal, are further improving efficiency by trialling an automatic import of IATI data into their internal Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) using an IATI-AIMS import tool. This can save valuable time that would otherwise be spent manually collecting and uploading data. It allows staff to spend more time using the data, and working with development partners locally to enrich and add context to it.

By using IATI data, government staff get a fuller picture of development and humanitarian activities and organisations operating in their country. They can find detailed information for specific projects and sometimes discover activities they were previously unaware of.

IATI resources for technical users

While there are many tools built to provide access to IATI data, they may not always meet your specific needs and there is a growing demand for bespoke products. For example, many governments have built their own portals to display their data in a way that the public can understand. Some organisations make tools for specific data queries or build new tools to analyse or visualise data in particular ways.

IATI and others have created resources to help developers build bespoke products.

Resources for developers

To allow for different ways of querying the data and to enable new tools to be built, IATI provides developers and other technical users access to useful APIs so they can work directly with the raw IATI XML data files.

IATI resources:

  • IATI Registry - IATI’s Registry API allows you to query the metadata on each organisation and xml file published to IATI. Metadata includes URLs to each published xml file, organisation publisher IDs and IATI organisation IDs.
  • IATI Datastore - IATI’s Datastore allows you to query all activity data and return it in formats beyond XML, including in JSON and CSV. The Datastore runs queries based on pre-existing set fields within IATI data and gives you the option to combine these queries.

Third-party technical resources

Other organisations have also created useful tools for technical users. These include: