11 December 2015: The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) has increased the number and variety of data publishers, but should increase the use of IATI data, particularly at the country level, according to the IATI Annual Report 2015. Among IATI’s 2015 achievements, the IATI Standard has been upgraded to enable members to monitor Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) progress at the country level, the report notes.

IATI, established in 2008, brings together donor and recipient countries, civil society organizations and other stakeholders to improve the transparency of aid, development and humanitarian resources to increase effectiveness in addressing poverty. The IATI Standard is a framework for publishing data on development cooperation activities.

IATI’s Annual Report describes the initiative’s progress on: improving the quality of published data; encouraging more organizations to publish to the IATI Standard; and increasing the use of IATI data, especially at the country level. The report highlights progress in increasing the comprehensiveness and timeliness of IATI data, with 40% of publishers providing monthly updates and 80% of publishers updating their data at least quarterly. The report notes reporting on forward-looking budgets remains a challenge. The number of organizations publishing IATI data has increased by nearly 70%, from 210 to 353 organizations, which are based in over 40 countries.

Despite these achievements, “there still aren’t enough people using IATI data to drive international development outcomes,” IATI Technical Advisory Group Chair John Adams states in the report. He recommends creating a “virtuous cycle where users tell publishers what needs to be improved, publishers respond, and users can then deploy the data for meaningful analysis of financial flows.”

In 2016, IATI will focus on adapting the Standard to better capture total resource flows available for development cooperation in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), according to the report. At the IATI Steering Committee meeting, which took place from 2-3 December 2015, in Copenhagen, Denmark, members discussed upgrades to the IATI Standard and the application and use of IATI data in combination with other data and indicators. On the potential to combine IATI data with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Creditor Reporting System (CRS) and Forward Spending Survey (FSS), members decided that such a combination would be “overly complex and therefore of limited political value in encouraging donors to improve their transparency.”

The IATI Standard version 2.02 incorporates the SDGs and targets and includes placeholders for the indicators. The Standard’s update is also expected to help capture data on humanitarian crises, with daily updates on financial and logistics data that can be automatically shared among donors and implementing agencies. [IATI Annual Report Page] [Executive Summary] [IATI News on Version 2.02] [About IATI]