The following addition to the IATI Organisation identifier list has been proposed for the World Bank Trust Funds.
Code: XI-IATI-WBTF
Name: World Bank Trust Funds (WBTF)
Description: A trust fund (TF) is a financing arrangement established with contributions from one or more external development partner(s)/partners, and in some cases, from the World Bank Group, to support development-related activities. The World Bank acts as a trustee/administrator for development partners (donors) funds and implements the activities financed through trust funds in accordance with the signed agreements with donors. As part of fiduciary obligations, the World Bank as Trustee/administrator of trust funds maintains the records for trust funds activities distinct and separate from the activities of IBRD and IDA. The Bank also provides periodic report on the financial situation and results of the individual trust funds to donors.
URL: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/trust-fund-annual-report-2019
The IATI tech team has been working closely with the WBTF in preparing their data for publication. The unique nature of financing by the World Bank Trust Funds have specific reporting attributes that may not necessarily be the same as for IBRD/IDA projects. Larger Trust Funds in the portfolio often have specific external reviews, which needs to be managed closer with the requestors of the review. There are also different systems used by WBTF and WB.
There is no registration agency or separate identifier for such entities as the WBTF and therefore the XI-IATI route has been taken. Creating a separate XI-IATI identifier for the World Bank Trust Funds (World Bank TF) will allows publishing the trust fund data in IATI separate from the World Bank.
If no objection is received this XI-IATI code will be approved and added in a week.
I am not objecting (and it it is great that this long standing data gap will be filled), but noting that this arrangement of being a trustee/administrator of funds from other organisations also applies to very many other IATI publishers who have not required a separate org-id, so maybe it would be worth sharing what the ‘specific reporting attributes’ are, that means these activities can’t use the normal WB org ID?
Having a separate org ID may make it much harder to trace activities, e.g. now all the funding organisations will have to differentiate between their activities which disburse into Trust Funds (which point to the WBTF), vs the other IBRD/IDA org ID for the more standard WB implemented projects? Also for end users, when looking for a WB implemented project, they now have to check two publishers.
However, precedent has certainly been set e.g. with OCHA having multiple org IDs etc. Dare I say it, we might need parent and child org IDs!
matmaxgeds thanks for your comment and confirming that you are not objecting to the proposal. As such, I will proceed with adding the code to our repository.
I have spoken to @LuzT and @madhukarb from the WBTF and they will respond with more details, so will keep the post open. I hope that is okay with you.
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