Busan endorsers significantly improve IATI data quality

  • Jan. 22, 2016

New analysis from IATI’s Dashboard shows that publishers who endorsed the 2011 Busan Partnership Agreement have made significant improvements in the quality of their development co-operation data. The figures, which were taken for a report for the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, to support their work in tracking progress of the implementation of Busan commitments, follow last month’s deadline to implement the Busan commitment of “a common, open standard for electronic publication of timely, comprehensive and forward-looking information on resources provided through development co-operation”.

IATI’s analysis shows that 29 of the 45 Busan endorsers who currently publish to IATI have improved the quality of their data in at least one of these three key dimensions in the last six months. Furthermore over half (53%) now meet the commitment to publish timely data. Nevertheless, further efforts are required to meet the Busan commitment in full, especially with regard to the publication of forward-looking data.

Here are our main findings:

Timeliness
For data to be useful to stakeholders at country level, it needs to be timely – published at least quarterly,  with a time-lag of no more than one quarter.

  • 53% of Busan endorsers who publish to IATI are meeting their commitment to publish data at least every quarter and with a time lag of one quarter at most (up from 40% in July 2015);
  • Frequency – 58% of Busan endorsers who publish to IATI are meeting their commitment to publish data at least quarterly (up from 50%) and 36% are exceeding their commitment by publishing data at least monthly (up from 33%);
  • Time lag – 64% are meeting their commitment to publish data with a time lag of one quarter at most (up from 45%) and 44% are exceeding their commitment by publishing data with a time lag of one month or less (up from 36%).

Forward-looking
Forward-looking data is essential for planning purposes, and remains a top ask for partner countries.

  • 40% are publishing at least some forward-looking information for 2016 budgets (up from 26% in July);
  • Of these, two publishers – Netherlands and Belgium – are providing budget information for 2016 for over all of their activities and a further two publishers are providing this data for more than half of their reported activities.

Comprehensiveness
Having detailed financial information is also vital in order to plan and manage resources effectively.

  • Core – 51% are publishing to 90% or over of the core fields of the IATI Standard (up from 50%);
  • Commitments – 62% are publishing commitments in 90% or over of their activities and 42% are publishing commitments in all of their activities (up from 38%);
  • Disbursements / Expenditure – 64% are publishing disbursement and/or expenditure transactions in 90% or over of their activities (up from 29%) and 44% are publishing disbursement and/or expenditure transactions in all of their activities (up from 17%);
  • Value added – On value added fields of the Standard, only 9% of publishers are using these fields in over 70% of their activities (up from 5%) and 24% are using them in at least half of their activities (up from 17%).

New publishers
Three new Busan endorsers have published to IATI for the first time since July – Norway, Lithuania and Romania.

NGOs and private sector publishers
The total number of NGOs publishing to IATI has increased to 266 (from 251 in July) while the number of private sector publishers has increased from 12 to 23. Of these, 33% of NGOs (up from 26%) and 9% of private sector organisations are publishing data at least quarterly; 42 NGOs (16%) and 4 private sector organisations (17%) are publishing at least some forward-looking budget information.