Discussion

'Default aid type' for Activity (v. 2.03)

Eimantas Stonys
Eimantas Stonys • 18 September 2018

Hey guys,

I have a question. I’m looking into the 2.03 documentation page for default-aid-type element for Activity and I can not understand the relationship between the “vocabulary” and “code” elements for this “default-aid-type” element.

If I understand everything correctly, for “default-aid-type” element, you have to specify a vocabulary code from the Aid Type Vocabulary codelist (it’s either 1 (OECD DAC), 2 (Earmarking Category) or 3 (Earmarking Modality)) and the the “code” attribute for this same “default-aid-type” is “A code from the specified vocabulary.”. So the ‘code’ attribute for this “default-aid-type” element has to come either from http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/dacandcrscodelists.htm, from http://reference.iatistandard.org/202/codelists/EarmarkingCategory/ or from https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Grand_Bargain_final_22_May_FINAL-2.pdf.

My questions are:

  1. Am I right ?
  2. If yes, why the docs say that “the ‘code’ attribute for default-aid-type must be on the AidType codelist” ? I don’t understand this.
  3. Could someone give me a single proper XML example of Activity which has multiple ‘default-aid-type’ elements which would be according to the standard? I’m really surprised that this is so (over)complex and there is none in the documentation.

cheers,

Comments (6)

Andy Lulham
Andy Lulham
Image removed. Eimis:

If I understand everything correctly, for “default-aid-type” element, you have to specify a vocabulary code from the Aid Type Vocabulary codelist

No, you don’t. If you don’t specify a vocabulary, OECD DAC is assumed. Or rather: the replicated version of the OECD DAC aid type codelist is assumed.

Image removed. Eimis:

So the ‘code’ attribute for this “default-aid-type” element has to come either from http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/dacandcrscodelists.htm, from http://reference.iatistandard.org/202/codelists/EarmarkingCategory/ or from https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Grand_Bargain_final_22_May_FINAL-2.pdf.

That’s right (but with the caveat above that the first one is actually the IATI replicated codelist and not the DAC source).

Image removed. Eimis:
  1. Am I right ?

Basically yes!

Image removed. Eimis:
  1. If yes, why the docs say that “the ‘code’ attribute for default-aid-type must be on the AidType codelist” ? I don’t understand this.

Oh, good point. That’s an error. It’s a result of a mapping that should have been amended at v2.03. Specifically, this one should look more like this one, in that it should include a condition element that looks like this:

<condition>@vocabulary = '1' or not(@vocabulary)</condition>

I guess the IATI Technical Team should fix this as a bug.

Image removed. Eimis:
  1. Could someone give me a single proper XML example of Activity which has multiple ‘default-aid-type’ elements which would be according to the standard? I’m really surprised that this is so (over)complex and there is none in the documentation.

So, something like this:

<iati-activity>
    …
    <default-aid-type code="A01" />
    <default-aid-type code="1" vocabulary="2" />
    …
</iati-activity>

This sets the default DAC aid type to A01 (General budget support) and the default earmarking category to 1 (Unearmarked).

Eimantas Stonys
Eimantas Stonys

A big thanks for your help Andy, it’s much more clear now. I’m surprised though that this needs such a separate detailed explanation. In my humble opinion, all these things (or at least your example) should appear in the official documentation page for this element.

Andy Lulham
Andy Lulham

Image removed. amys:

Apologies, I forgot that this discussion took place: Add vocabularies to aid-type (included 2.03)

Yes, exactly.

So to clarify: At v2.03, an activity is now allowed multiple default-aid-types. That’s in order to accommodate one default per vocabulary.

Max one default per vocabulary could be enforced with a ruleset rule, but it’s not enforceable at schema level.

The change was made here: https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Schemas/issues/350

In fact, Amy Silcock I’d suggest removing this post, because it’s potentially confusing.


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