Frequently asked questions

In the Accra Agenda for Action, donors made a number of specific commitments on aid transparency, including commitments to “publicly disclose regular, detailed and timely information on volume, allocation and, when available, results of development expenditure to enable more accurate budget, accounting and audit by developing countries”, as well as agreeing to publish all conditions linked to disbursements and providing forward-looking information to help partner countries plan and manage aid resources.

IATI aims to help signatories meet these commitments in the most coherent and consistent way, by developing a common standard for the publication of their aid information. DFID became the first donor to publish their aid information to the IATI standard in January, and several more signatories are expected to implement IATI prior to the next High Level Forum in Busan in November.

Read more about the relationship between IATI and the Accra commitments.

To date, 19 donors have signed up to IATI and 19 developing countries have endorsed the initiative.

IATI will help those involved in aid programmes to better track what aid is being used for and what it is achieving – from the taxpayers in donor countries who provide the money, to those in developing countries who benefit from aid spending. IATI does not require countries receiving aid to adjust their in-country systems, although it gives them an opportunity to do so if they wish.

Better information about aid will help governments in developing countries manage aid resources more effectively as part of their integrated national development planning. Parliaments and CSOs in partner countries and donor countries alike will be better equipped to monitor aid, increasing accountability and reducing the scope for corruption.

IATI has developed detailed definitions and formats for the publication of aid information. Phase 1 of the IATI standard was agreed in July, and most of the definitions expand on the DAC CRS definitions developed by WP-STAT. The remaining phases of IATI will cover a number of items not currently reported to the DAC CRS, so for these, new definitions and formats have been developed. Full details of the relationship between the IATI standard and the DAC CRS are available here on the IATI website.

Australia, Sweden, BetterAid , Burkina Faso , Civicus , Colombia, Development Gateway, Development Initiatives for Poverty Research, Dominican Republic, EC, Germany, Ghana, Malawi , Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea , Publish What You Fund, Rwanda, Transparency International, UNDP, UK, Vietnam, World Bank.

View the full list of members.

The IATI Steering Committee has responsibility for overseeing IATI. They make key decisions about IATI project planning, budget utilisation, and proposals on the information to be published under IATI. The Steering Committee meets 3-4 times per year.

The final decision on the IATI standards will be made by all IATI donor signatories and the IATI Steering Committee. Partner countries who have endorsed IATI, and interested civil society organisations, will be represented by members of the Steering Committee.

Technical work under IATI is taken forward by the IATI Technical Advisory Group (TAG). The TAG is chaired by Brian Hammond, formerly head of statistics at the OECD-DAC. The TAG reports to the Steering Committee. Membership is open to any interested donor, partner country, civil society representative, and aid information expert.

Sign up or endorse IATI. All donors are invited to sign up to the IATI Accra Statement. Partner countries are invited to endorse the statement. This means that they support the aims and objectives of the initiative and will contribute to its design and implementation, while recognising the main obligations under IATI are placed on donors. To date 19 partner countries have endorsed IATI, Bangladesh and Liberia being the latest additions.

Join the Technical Advisory Group (TAG.) This group develops technical proposals for review by the IATI Steering Committee. It is open to users and providers of aid data and statistics (e.g. donors, partner countries, CSOs) and experts in using technology for aid effectiveness and the development of standards.

Send your comments on IATI papers and proposals. All those on the IATI mailing list receive papers and are able to provide comments. To join the list, please e-mail AJ-Wardhaugh2@dfid.gov.uk.

Attend events including conferences and consultations where these occur. Details can be found on the IATI website, or you can Subscribe to events.

Once the IATI standard has been agreed, it is hoped that it can be tailored for use by a wide range of donors including NGOs, Foundations and non-DAC donors. The IATI Secretariat propose to set up a new working group on NGOs early in the new year, and around 30 NGOs have already expressed an interest in taking part in this process.

IATI is undertaking a number of country pilots that will test, amongst other things, automated data exchange to county-based aid management systems, which could substantially reduce the costs associated with manual input of data to AIMS.

The DAC CRS and IATI serve different purposes and meet different needs. These two approaches are not competitors; they are complements. CRS is a comprehensive, authoritative database which provides consistent and coherent information about aid spending by DAC donors. IATI is a streamlined way for donors to publish a lot of detailed information which can be used in many different ways and by different people, while avoiding duplication of effort.

The main differences between the IATI standard and the DAC CRS are:

- Timeliness: information is currently between 11 to 23 months out of date by the time it is published in CRS. This is due to an annual reporting cycle and the need to report comprehensive ODA data from multiple agencies, and undertake quality assurance for statistical integrity. IATI aims to update information at least every quarter.

- Information not statistics: It is vital that verified, high quality statistics are collected on aid activities and this is a function that the DAC CRS does extremely well. But IATI is about information rather than statistics.

- Level of detail and type of information: Information currently captured by DAC is only a subset of the suggested IATI requirements. Much more information is needed to track where the money has been spent and what it is planned to be spent on, as well as information on policy and project documents.

- Unit of analysis: The CRS does not show information by project. Information is either shown at the level of individual commitments or disbursements, or is aggregated to sector level. IATI will provide information on individual aid projects, making it easier to trace where the money is going.

- Coverage: IATI is not limited to DAC donors, but seeks to develop a standard that can be tailored for use by all donors, including non-DAC donors, foundations and NGOs.

- Classifications: The classifications used within the DAC are designed to meet the needs for international statistical reporting. They do not meet the needs for partner countries to align aid flows with their own budget classifications. IATI will aim to allow donors to report classifications that meet the needs of the DAC and of partner countries.

- Capacity: Both the DAC secretariat and donor statistical reporters have limited capacity. Much IATI information will not comprise verified statistics, and so IATI publication does not need to go through the statistical reporter. Instead it could be automated or published directly by staff in country offices.

Read more about the relationship between IATI and the CRS.

There are already many overlapping reporting systems. IATI seeks to reduce these and apply common standards and definitions to those that remain. We are seeking to establish a common way of recording and publishing aid information that enables a variety of users to access the data they require and present the information in different ways.

We believe this complements DAC reporting since:

- Where common definitions have already been agreed through the DAC, these will be used as the basis for IATI reporting

- IATI is likely to include qualitative information, while DAC reporting is focused on statistics

- IATI aims to simplify and harmonise the reporting, and help donors to meet the growing need for more information, especially at country level

- IATI publication doesn’t need to be centralised or go through the statistics reporter. Where relevant for the donor, information can be published at country level

- IATI will aim to publish provisional data more quickly, so that it can be used by partner country governments and other stakeholders in a timely manner. This is particularly important for partner countries, which require aid information to inform their budget processes.

Not necessarily. In many cases the publication of IATI information will not go through the statistical reporters, or even be centralised. Information may be automatically published by central systems or published manually through country offices (as is the case currently when reporting to country aid management systems).

One pivotal point that needs addressing is the issue of distinguishing the costs of transparency from the costs of IATI. There are many cultural and organisational implications that come with increased transparency, however it is implemented, but IATI is a way of achieving increased transparency with minimised administrative costs, in addition to maximising benefits to users.

We must all accept the drive towards greater transparency; the costs that stakeholders often apply to IATI are really the true costs of transparency and are unavoidable if we are to achieve a more transparent aid system.

The main misconception that seems to arise when questioning IATI is that there is a huge ask on donors publishing information. Some donors have cited that IATI’s goal is too ambitious and that the potential amount of data that would need to be published is huge. Our response is that, while we acknowledge that IATI is ambitious, it must support donors in meeting their Accra commitments as well as responding to the priority needs of partner countries. Also, IATI will reduce the costs to donors associated with duplicate reporting and bring substantial benefits to the users of aid information, especially those in partner countries.

Another misconception often cited is that IATI is inflexible and will not allow changes in donor information. To combat this issue the IATI standard has been tailored to be flexible, so that ad-hoc reporting can occur when needed. New requests for data will be coordinated and the information needs from a new policy initiative should be considered early.

Our research tells us that the vast majority of organisations already hold the necessary data in some format and that the technical effort involved in publishing such data would not be huge. However, the cultural and organisational needs of publishing more information will require additional effort, albeit one which would need to occur sooner or later. Although there will be an initial surge in effort needed to prepare for data release, donors may benefit from developing a shared good practice guide for internal systems across organisations, and learning from each others’ experiences.

IATI as built on DAC standards where they exist, and the DAC Working Party on Statistics (WP-STAT) will continue to be custodians of these standards. However, IATI includes a much wider set of information than that included in the DAC CRS.
Where IATI is proposing publication of information beyond that currently collected by the DAC, IATI will define these standards, drawing on other existing standards where they exist.

IATI aims to design a standard that has common global standard elements where appropriate, but most importantly has flexibility to incorporate local standards where necessary. Donor staff would classify projects according to a combination of universal and local classifications. Most of the data collected about each project would be universal – for example the dates and amounts of transactions and financial terms.

In addition to the universal classifications, projects would also be tagged with any specific classifications and information needed for local systems (e.g. national budget classifications and those used in local aid information management systems (AIMS)) This would apply for example to sectoral/budget classifications, administrative units, country financial years, language, sub-national geographic classifications, and country specific results indicators.

This may seem like additional work because it means double coding some information for each project. But donors already have to double code every project so that they can report it both to the DAC and to the local aid information management system. The main difference from now would be that projects would routinely be classified as they are developed and agreed, and this information would be published more rapidly as unified, consistent and universally accessible data, rather than supplied separately when requested.

No. IATI seeks to remove the dependence on any one system or database to make information transparent or accessible. While Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) have the potential to increase aid transparency and facilitate good governance by creating an enabling environment for aid tracking, disclosure, and accountability, at present:

- Most aid management systems are designed to meet Ministry of planning/finance needs (e.g. annual reporting). They often do not meet the needs of other stakeholders such as Parliaments or line ministries, which may then introduce their own systems.

- Holding the data in bespoke systems makes it difficult for others to get at them to develop innovative new services that make the data more accessible

- Most aid management systems are not yet publicly available.

This does not mean that reporting via IATI will be additional to reporting to the country aid management system. The IATI standard will be designed to ensure that information reported via IATI will meet the needs of the Aid Information Management System, many of which already make use of international (mainly CRS) standards.

Several donors, including the European Commission, are ready to fund the introduction of AIMS if partner countries wish to introduce such systems.

Many partner countries have Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) which are of enormous benefit to them in collecting and monitoring information on aid. Partner countries also collect and record aid information as part of the budget processes, in line with the Paris Declaration commitments. However, partners report that they continue to struggle to access good, up-to-date information from donors to populate their AIMS and budgets. We believe IATI can make a valuable contribution to these systems and the data collection processes to make the data more complete and their collection more sustainable. IATI improves information in developing countries because:

– donors make a stronger and more accountable commitment to provide comprehensive data and information;

- donors put in place more systematic mechanisms to collect, structure and publish information needed by developing country governments;

- data provided by donors will be publicly available at the same time, resulting in stronger internal pressures to improve quality of the data;

- because information is public, civil society are able to hold donors to account so increasing donors’ incentives to report comprehensively and accurately;

- publication of a common dataset to serve as the basis of all reporting by donors reduces inconsistencies, double counting and missing data, and make it possible to reconcile data from a variety of sources.

IATI information datasets contain all the information, suitably classified, needed for local AIMS. Developing countries need not change their classifications at all.
AIMS can also add value to IATI by feeding information back to the IATI registry. For example, from donors that have not signed up to IATI.

To ensure that multiple users and intermediaries are able to access information, IATI proposes that data and documents must be available in a standard format, rather than being locked away in many different bespoke databases.

Under IATI proposals, donors are responsible for gathering detailed information about each project or programme, and classifying them according to both global and local classifications. Donors assemble this information using their own internal systems, apply internal quality control, and then export it into data files in a common electronic format.

Donors publish their IATI information online, either on their own website or, if they prefer, on third party sites, and they would register the location of the data with the IATI registry.

Organisations involved in the delivery of aid, country Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) and third-party aggregators can also publish and register information in IATI format.

The IATI registry is a kind of online catalogue that points users to the information they need. The registry keeps track of which IATI data sets are available, what they cover, and where they are located. It is not a database, and does not keep a copy of the data. The registry is a signposting system used either by a person – using, for example, a web browser – or by a computer programme such as a database.

To ensure that multiple users and intermediaries are able to access information, IATI proposes that data and documents must be available in a standard format, rather than being locked away in many different bespoke databases.

The average user will use the services of ‘infomediaries’ to present the information they need. Infomediaries are organisations that collect and share information on particular topics. Infomediaries might, for example, collect all the available information on malaria and HIV, and provide services summarising this information for users.

This will makes information more accessible, for example via databases that pull all the information together for a mainstream audience, and small niche applications designed to meet the needs of small groups of users.

There are likely to be sector-specific portals (e.g. on tropical diseases), country or regional portals such as aid information management systems (AIMS), as well as global portals to access the whole information set.

These will all be sharing common data and so are consistent with each other; users can mix and match according to their specific needs.

Increased availability of data does not necessarily mean increased accessibility to data. This concern is accepted and shared by donors and IATI members alike and has been considered thus:

-For data to be easily accessible it needs to be produced in a standard and re-usable format.

-The IATI registry will make documents and data available in a standard format, rather than being locked away in many different bespoke databases.

-The majority of users want to access information from many different sources simultaneously.

-This makes the transparency of particular organisations less valuable if the information they publish cannot be aggregated and compared against other organisations.

-This will create the opportunity for others to develop services that make the raw data published to the IATI standard more accessible.

There are likely to be sector-specific portals (e.g. on tropical diseases), country or regional portals such as aid information management systems (AIMS), as well as global portals to access the whole information set. These will share common data and will be consistent across the board, making it possible for users to mix and match according to their specific needs.

We do not think it is desirable for IATI to develop a one-size-fits-all database. We believe that creating a huge IATI database would not only limit the potential for innovation and undermine existing initiatives, but also feel the one-size-fits-all model is unlikely to be successful in meeting all the needs of the wide variety of stakeholders we have identified.

IATI should not force anyone to use someone else’s database; it should enable developing countries to develop systems that meet their own needs, and to get the information they need automatically from donors.

There are many databases already available, which serve their intended audiences. IATI seeks to support these existing initiatives by enabling donors to publish information in a common format and using common definitions. This will make it easier for those databases to gather and use the data. It will also ensure that data published in different databases and in different locations are consistent and coherent.

As donors move to become more transparent, it is important that the information they publish is of sufficient quality. There is a direct trade-off with timeliness – information is more useful if it is available in good time, especially for aid management purposes, but this reduces the time available for central scrutiny and checking.

Any moves to greater transparency have to balance the need for high quality data with the need to make more information accessible in a timely manner. Specific features of the IATI proposal for minimising the risks and maintaining quality are:

- projects and programmes would be usually classified and coded at the time by the staff with the most direct experience of those projects;

- organisations often take more care over accuracy of information that is going to be published;

- mistakes often arise from problems reconciling and aggregating information from many different sources. IATI would make it much easier to reconcile information;

- the adoption of common definitions would reduce the risk of misunderstandings both for users and for those assembling the information.

Yes, there is potential to automate the publication of IATI information and updating of the IATI registry.

The proposed approach for publishing information allows flexibility for donors to choose how best to publish and the degree to which it is automated. This largely depends on how much of the information is captured in donor systems.

For donors with comprehensive, centralised systems that capture all the relevant information complying with IATI definitions, we believe automated publication should not pose a challenge.

For others that don’t have centralised systems or processes, it may be preferable to manually publish information from country offices.

For most, at least initially, it is likely to be a mixture of the two. Some information publication can be automated (e.g. regular publication of past disbursements), and some may be manually published (e.g. annual forward planning budgets). Over time, it may be that donors will modify their systems to enable increased automation.

Donors already have to assemble the information needed to supply partner government systems and ad hoc requests for information. By providing this information through a data repository, the needs of partner governments can be met more systematically and comprehensively, accessibility can be increased while reducing the duplication of effort for donors.

IATI is being designed to meet the information needs of partner countries and their budgets and aid management systems. We believe that there is potential for reporting to aid management systems (AIMS) to be automated, and this will enable partner countries, if they choose, to make minor adjustments to their AIMS to enable that automation. This would save huge effort for partner countries trying to maintain the information in their AIMS. Where partner countries do not wish to make any changes to their systems, they will not have to. IATI will nevertheless provide them with substantial benefits, as outlined above, and they will be able to continue to enter information into their systems manually.

Yes, If the information exists and is aligned with the IATI definitions, it should not be technically difficult to export in an IATI format. The challenge comes where the information exists, but uses different classifications and definitions to IATI information. In such cases an automatic mapping between definitions can be done where possible; otherwise systems need to be modified to incorporate the new definitions or information must be manually reported.

Donors have expressed concerns that meeting publication standards for aid data under IATI may have implications for them. This may be the case, but donors will have to operate differently to achieve greater transparency anyway, for example to fulfil their Accra commitments on transparency. Certain donor information – for example information that is sensitive on security grounds – is only suitable for internal viewing, and will need to be screened prior to publication. Any system which makes more information available to the public will mean that donors will have to tighten their processes to make this information suitable for publication. This is an unavoidable result of publishing this additional information, and does not depend on the choice of mechanism for IATI. Compared to the benefits that greater transparency will bring to everyone in the aid system, it is a worthwhile investment.

Many expressed doubts about the costs of IATI. In fact, IATI can help donors to avoid the unnecessary administrative costs associated with duplicate reporting. Although there will be initial set-up costs, these will be recovered quite quickly, and the costs associated greater transparency are far outweighed by the substantial benefits. Our preliminary analysis has suggested that the costs of implementing the IATI proposals for donors would be offset by the efficiency savings within 1-2 years, although further work is required to refine and test these calculations. In addition, IATI is expected to result in improvements in aid effectiveness by:

- reducing diversion and capture;
- reducing unpredictability;
- improving accountability and service delivery;
- improving co-ordination;
- facilitating research;
- improving aid allocation;
- increasing public support for development.

If information doesn’t exist in donor systems, but is known (e.g. held within documents), then either donors will have to modify their systems to capture the information in a structured format, or publish it manually. This is a consequence of donor commitment to greater aid transparency. IATI provides a mechanism to enable donors to do this automatically in future, and to add value to what would otherwise be inaccessible information.

Quality of information is a common and legitimate concern amongst all donors. The experience from donors that have gone through the process of publishing information onto their own websites is that a one-off special exercise was required to clean up data and documents before publication. This should be done in conjunction with an initiative to educate staff on the importance of quality information, generally as part of a response to meeting the needs of more proactive publication under Freedom of Information legislation.

We also believe that transparency and public access to information is an extremely powerful incentive to improve the quality of information published, and can have a positive impact on the quality of information being captured in internal systems (and therefore improve internal reporting and DAC reporting). Most of the information will be published by staff working directly with partner countries and so they will be taking due care of the accuracy of the information that they share.

For some purposes, final quality assured information is needed, and this process of quality assurance takes time. For some other purposes, it is more important to have timely information which has not yet been through a central checking process. The IATI standard will include a marker to indicate the status of relevant, mainly statistical, data: quality checked or still to be quality checked. Different users can then choose whether to restrict themselves to the final data.

As a minimum, information should be published in the language used when working with the partner country government.

Where money is channelled through NGOs, donors should ask them to also publish information on the projects being funded by these funds, as part of their reporting responsibilities. We will design the standard in a way that avoids double counting (e.g. by asking providers of information to specify their funding source).

For core contributions to multilateral agencies, data are already measured in the DAC system at two points in time: the payment to the multilateral and again when the multilateral spends the money in a partner country. By recording the channel used to provide funds and the type of flow, IATI will record both of these transactions. Already two multilateral development banks have signed up to IATI and so will be publishing their outflow data to the IATI registry. Donors could encourage the others to do likewise.

For budget support, for the purposes of IATI, this is considered to be the end of the chain for donor transparency and there is no further obligation on donors to publish information beyond the commitments they give to recipient governments and the subsequent related information. The scope of IATI is limited to donor aid flows and does not extend to transparency of expenditure of partner country budgets. It is important for there to be effective monitoring and accountability of budget execution in all countries. We hope that where budgets are more transparent, the information about budgets could eventually be linked to the IATI aid data to tell a complete story. The adoption of open standards for data about aid will facilitate this linkage.

IATI will make it possible for third party organisations and individuals to access and use the information supplied through IATI via the registry. This will allow users to develop applications and services to present the information in order to meet specific needs.

Current thinking is that the registry is likely to provide links to raw data in machine readable formats, and so will allow automated access. There should be some sort of subscription service that will inform interested parties of new data available. In the future, it is possible this access could be expanded to include application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow direct programmatic access to live data stores.

How information will be licensed through IATI will be a topic for discussion in the Technical Advisory Group. The details of how it will be licensed, and whether it can be used for commercial purposes are still to be agreed, but we aim to make the information openly licensed, with as few constraints for accessing and using it as possible. There are different licensing models available, including models that require attribution when used, and models where info must be shared using the same license.