IATI FAQs

Compliance Questions: Q: Minimum information that NGOs need to publish to be considered to be “IATI compliant”? A: ‘Minimum standards’ will be presented at the workshop on 15 September.

Q: Frequency of publication? A: Should be in line with IATI recommendation, which is either for quarterly or monthly reporting. DFID is content with quarterly reporting. DFID will monitor progress towards IATI compliance by PPA partners annually.

Q: Do we have to publish data on closed projects at the point of starting to publish IATI data A: No (although gold standard would be to publish everything you can, whether closed or not).

Q: For projects that subsequently become closed, what happens? A: Anything published under IATI (including final documents etc.) remain published as records.

Q: How should we handle projects that are part of an overarching programme? A: As long as the DFID funds are reported on, it doesn’t matter whether it is under the overarching programme or at the project level. Gold standard would be to publish all projects documents under any given programme.

Q: How should we deal with partners, especially partners who sub-grant? A: Report on all expenditure that is DFID funded (whether it is implemented by partners or not). PPAs need to be IATI compliant on what they do, be it through partners or not.

Q: What are the implications of a PPA partner not meeting the minimum IATI standards by the DFID deadline? A: IATI compliance will be considered and monitored annually by DFID. PPA annual reviews and other monitoring processes will feed into the overall performance assessment.

General: Q: What is the expectation of NGOs in terms of promoting IATI – do IATI have expectations (or DFID) and how should we expect to engage externally? A: DFID expects NGOs to be supportive and highlight the links between transparency and effectiveness where possible. Gold standard would be to promote IATI amongst partners, other governments/donors/ institutions who haven’t signed up yet.

Q: Can we use PPA funds to pay for any costs related to meeting our IATI minimum standards? A: PPA funds are unrestricted, therefore yes, as long as this does not take away from those programmes and projects to be reported on within the performance framework.

Q: How does this fit in with other global accountability initiatives? A: IATI recognises that NGOs and CSOs are already involved in a number of initiatives aimed at addressing their own transparency and accountability, including the Open Forum for Civil Society Development Effectiveness, the INGO Accountability Charter and the Global Reporting Initiative. All of these demonstrate the commitment of CSOs to increasing their own transparency and IATI is keen to learn from and engage with them as appropriate. This will be discussed as part of the TAG (Technical Advisory Group) Working Group on CSOs.

1 Q: Will there be an ongoing source of technical support for us in IATI? A: The TAG will be able to offer technical assistance through teleconferences and the IATI support site (support.iatistandard.org). They will also be working with Bond to produce detailed guidance materials. There is also currently work going ahead to pilot a piece of open source software that enables organisations to type data on projects and activities into a secure online database, and then automatically export the data into the IATI format. This Web Entry Platform should be launched towards the end of 2012. Bond will provide facilitation and convening support to enable more effective support from TAG to PPAs. Additionally, Bond will provide online resources and signposting, regularly updated online FAQs, case studies etc.; Convene peer learning groups who will provide support to each other and surface issues for Bond, TAG and DFID to address; Facilitate the agreement of a NGO exclusion policy; Run joint training and regular surgery sessions with TAG; Host online discussion forum / resource bank.

Q: Outputs verses outcomes, IATI appears to ask for outputs (e.g. number of wells) rather than outcomes (e.g. number of people reached). This conflicts a bit with the general trend. A: The results section of the standard allows for reporting on both outputs and outcomes.

Q: How should we deal with unrestricted or strategic grants, where we can’t necessarily show direct disbursements? A: Two options: a) report on the entire organisation’s work or b) against programmes included the grant agreement’s performance frameworks

Q: What about non-PPA grants? A: Yes, will be requested to be IATI compliant where in receipt of DFID funding (GPAF etc)

Q: Are agencies expected to become IATI compliant on all income or just their international spending (more of a question for DFID)? A: Expected to be compliant on all DFID funding received, irrespective of where funding is spent.

Q: If reporting is on international spending only, are agencies expected to report on all international expenditure or just grant funded or just program expenditure? A: Refer to minimum standard for compliance. Gold standard is on all expenditure.

Technical Q: What are the technical requirements (IT/web) and what will the support be for that? A: There are three options: a) export data from in-house database to IATI-xml file/s and publish on own website; b) Prepare data in an IATI-specified CSV/excel format, submit to an IATI conversion tool and publish the output on own website; c) enter data into IATI web-entry platform.

Q: What are the plans for implementing or recommending web-based query & visualisation tools based on links found in the registry? A: The TAG have already been working with some developers to create some open source tools that organisations can use to show their data in a user-friendly way. Further work is on- going, and IATI would welcome any suggestions of the kind of tools people might want.

Q: When comparing data across all organisations - including donors and recipients how will the system avoid double counting of activity (funded by one and implemented by another)? 2 A: Donor transactions are recorded as disbursements or expenditure. Recipients record incoming funds and, where available, the donor activity identifier. This allows for the same funds to be unambiguously tracked between organisations and for arithmetic rules to be applied.

Q: Is there any flexibility on start and finish dates and the definitions used - rather than recording the start as date of first disbursement and completion as date of last disbursement? A: There is flexibility on start and finish dates, they can either be planned or actual, and the definition is dependent on how an organisation is reporting and what information they are reporting.

Q: Is it expected that agencies will be able to report on sub-national geographic location? A: This is not an immediate requirement but it is expected that the increasing popularity of geocoded data in general will drive agencies in this direction.

Q: Reporting on Disbursement verses expenditure. Disbursement often to a partner for a number of projects, not to specific project, therefore actual expenditure is easier to link to specific project. A: Disbursement to a partner for number of projects is not enough. Reporting needs to be from disbursement through to expenditure. IATI expects each reporting organisation to take responsibility for its own transactions. If Organisation A disburses funds to Organisation B who spends it on a range of activities, Organisation A is not responsible for reporting the expenditure, only the disbursements it made itself.

Q: The Results section of the Activity standard is optional. Are there examples of organisations trying to use this section? A: The TAG have been working with the Global Fund to publish results information. This will shortly be available to share with other organisations when they publish to the registry.

Q: It will cost us some money to adjust the information fields on our systems (to comply with the IATI standard. Would DFID encourage us to develop a pragmatic step-wise plan that efficiently manages the costs of making the necessary changes? A: Yes, step wise approach is sensible, though it will need to fit into the required timeline.

Implementation plan Q: What level of detail / format does DFID expect in the implementation plan that PPA partners have committed to by December? A: to be discussed/presented at the workshop

Comparability & Data usage: Q: Concern if different organisations produce data used in benchmarking on different bases (e.g. inclusion of support costs) A: Likely to happen but there is advice and guidance to follow in order to make data comparable (in so far as possible)

Q: Concern if incomplete data is published (“publish what you can”) and this is used for comparative purposes, might be misleading. A: This concern is an additional incentive to reach gold standard

3 Q: As opposed to defining a set of broad principles and information requirements, the IATI standard defines a prescriptive set of information fields. This implies that the data may be picked up and analysed/ used by others. Is that correct? Who would use the data and how? A: A number of interested parties may use the data; partner governments, UK public, think tanks etc. for a variety of usage (i.e. country programming – know who is active where and on what etc…)

Exclusion Q: Are there any existing rules set for excluding data that can be used as a reference? A: No – an organisation is able to define its own rules for excluding data. The TAG Working Group on CSOs will be working on recommended guidelines that CSOs might want to follow when planning exclusions.

Q: Are there risks from putting information into the public domain that might usually be seen as confidential to the organisation (budgets etc)? A: There may be, which is why there are exclusion policies. If there are concerns regarding information provided to DFID that may end up in the public domain, this will need to be flagged to DFID in order for us to apply the exclusion policy where necessary (e.g. security concerns). DFID automatically publishes information received, therefore PPA partners are responsible for highlighting areas of concern at the time of submitting.

Other grants / donors / initiatives Q: Are different donors going to interpret IATI in different ways and request different things from NGOs? A: No, there are clear guidelines and templates

Last updated: 12 September 2011

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