Transparency in Practice: IATI Implementation

  • May 12, 2011

Over the past few weeks, the IATI Technical Advisory Group Secretariat has run Implementation Workshops with a small group of IATI signatories and observers. The first hosted by the UK and attended by the EC, Global Fund, the Netherlands and Sweden, and the second hosted by the World Bank and attended by Canada, the Foundation Center, the Hewlett Foundation, UNDP and USAID.

Both workshops were an opportunity for those organisations in the process of implementing or planning implementation to meet together and share lessons and challenges from their own experiences.

All organisations highlighted the importance of incremental approaches to transparency and publishing open data. Initially publishing what you can, with a commitment to complying to the standard at a later date is a valid and useful method for publishing aid data in accordance to the standard.

Other areas of discussion included:

  • Change management and communications: raising awareness of transparency in an organisation and the explaining the impact of the change process to all members of staff;
  • Data quality: when to start the data quality process in the project cycle, and integrating it into existing processes;
  • Governance structures and managing implementation: structuring IATI implementation like a standard IT project and forming working groups;
  • Using IATI data: how providers of data can collaborate with those using it, in order to create useful tools and ideas for improving data;
  • Technical architecture: what organisations have currently got in place and how it can be adapted and changed to fit with IATI implementation;

For more information on implementation and to start or join any discussions about any topics around implementation, visit the support forum on the IATI Standard website. If you are an IATI signatory and would like to participate in any future implementation workshops, please contact Isabel Bucknall.