Title
Results – allow disaggregations of results data
Standard
Activity
Schema Object
iati-activities/iati-activity/result/indicator/period/target
iati-activities/iati-activity/result/indicator/period/actual
Type of Change
Change to Schema
Issue
• Currently, you cannot have more than one target and actual per period. This means that it is not possible to disaggregate an indicator by more than one set of dimensions, specify other than by a technical workaround (see suggestions below).
• Why is this a problem?: Many donors ask for results data to be disaggregated by, for example gender AND disability status, or gender AND age. This is not currently allowed in the schema, as only one target and one actual is allowed per period (per indicator). “It is recognised widely that results presented as averages for entire populations will usually mask differences within that population group, for example, by gender, wealth, disability, ethnicity, etc. The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular have put this issue higher on the agenda, under the heading of “Leave no one behind”. In order to ensure equity and the inclusion of marginalised groups, it is vital that disaggregated data is collected (and many aid providers are increasingly requiring disaggregation by a number of dimensions - For example, DFID requires results to be disaggregated by gender and is rolling out requirements to disaggregate by disability status). For IATI data to be useful, it in turn must enable the publication of disaggregated results data.” https://www.bond.org.uk/resources/publishing-results-to-iati:
• Suggestion: The current workaround is to have two near identical indicators (eg through “dimension”) (or periods of time within indicators) for the same result. This leads to confusion as there is no sure way to know which values should be considered as disaggregations versus those that belong to separate indicators. It also causes duplicate information for the rest of the indicator, adding an unnecessary source of potential error and reporting burden.
Proposal
Multiple target and actual values (representing each disaggregation) should be permitted for a given period of an indicator. Change cardinality of “target” and “actual” elements from 0…1 to 0…*
(see http://iatistandard.org/202/activity-standard/iati-activities/iati-activity/result/indicator/period/target/ and http://iatistandard.org/202/activity-standard/iati-activities/iati-activity/result/indicator/period/actual/ for relevant sections of the standard))
Standards Day
Workshopped at the TAG 2017 and mentioned at the end of the Standards day as part of the results section. Although there was very little time to discuss the proposal, no criticism of the proposal was offered. Proposal has been on IATI Discuss since March 2017.
Links
• This topic has been discussed and agreed previously but missed in implementation: Disaggregation of results
• A more recent discussion is here: Results: allow disaggregation
• This topic addresses Principle 4 from a consultation driven by Monitoring and Evaluation experts from UK CSOs Jan – Mar 2017 – see Results: discussion space and TAG 2016/17 path. Technical suggestions were devised by technology specialists at the Nethope Athens conference March 2017. In all around 30 M&E and technical specialists were involved in this consultation and it builds on a previous consultation by Bond 2015-16 (https://www.bond.org.uk/resources/publishing-results-to-iati - also on discuss.iatistandard : Sharing Results using IATI data standard: will it improve learning and accountability? ).
Hi Hayden Field - thanks for the contribution - sorry I should have written tighter text - taking the whole text that refers to this in the Issues statement:
“Currently, you cannot have more than one target and actual per period. This means that it is not possible to disaggregate an indicator by more than one set of dimensions, specify other than by a technical workaround (see suggestions below). …
Suggestion: The current workaround is to have two near identical indicators (eg through “dimension”) (or periods of time within indicators) for the same result. This leads to confusion as there is no sure way to know which values should be considered as disaggregations versus those that belong to separate indicators. It also causes duplicate information for the rest of the indicator, adding an unnecessary source of potential error and reporting burden.”
It should instead read:
“Currently, you cannot have more than one target and actual per period. This means that it is not possible to disaggregate an indicator by more than one set of dimensions, specify other than by a technical workaround (see suggestions below). …
Suggestion: The current workaround is to have two near identical indicators (eg through “dimension”) (or periods of time within indicators) for the same result. This leads to confusion as there is no sure way to know which values should be considered as disaggregations or those that belong to separate indicators. It also causes duplicate information for the rest of the indicator, adding an unnecessary source of potential error and reporting burden.”
The point of the proposal is to remove unnecessary technical workarounds, and had already been discussed and agreed previously a year or so ago: Disaggregation of results
Mike Smith Thanks for this clarification, I’d missed the discussion previously.
Sooooo, with a couple of examples is the following understanding of the proposal correct? …
At present, dimensions disaggregated by indicator must be represented as:
The proposal is to permit the following format:
Assuming this is correct, a couple of questions (apologies for my lack of subject knowledge!)…
Background
Part of the suggestion is that:
Question 1
With the existing format, each of the <period> elements are contained within the same <indicator>. As such, in what way is it unclear whether the periods are disaggregations or something else?
Background
As part of the work on adding the Humanitarian Page to the Dashboard, it was determined that a 784 element truth table is required to answer the question of “Is this activity humanitarian?” at v2.02 (because sectors). From the perspective of data use, this status of having multiple ways to represent the same information is not good.
Question 2
In what way does the proposed format provide more information to the data user than the current format? (either based on the examples I provided or an alternative that better demonstrates the additional meaning that could be conveyed)