_NB: picking up on discussions that are here: http://support.iatistandard.org/hc/en-us/articles/214390586 - with Herman van Loon Rolf Kleef Yohanna Loucheur Bill Anderson John Adams _
As we know, the code “Incoming Commitment” was added to 2.02 (but not to earlier versions of the standard, as Herman van Loon originally proposed). My understanding is that one purpose of this is to enable publishers to be clear about the commitments they have from others - and to not use the Incoming Funds code to declare this.
This leaves the Commitment code. Yohanna Loucheur asked:
I want to make sure I understand how the codelist will work. If it’s an incoming commitment we would code it 11, while for an outgoing commitment we continue using code 2 “Commitment”? Would it be clearer to rename 2 “Outgoing Commitment”, or would that be too much trouble for what it’s worth?
This didn’t seem to get discussed in the original thread.
Looking across the standard. there seems to be a slight ambiguity in terms of the relationship between the Commitment transaction and a “total budget” of an activity. IATI Guidance states:
Commitment (code2)- the total agreed budget for the activity.
The actual codelist definition for Commitment seems to be different in approach:
A firm, written obligation from a donor or provider to provide a specified amount of funds, under particular terms and conditions, for specific purposes, for the benefit of the recipient.
In short, I think there are two uses of Commitment, around IATI land. Publishers may do either (or both in some cases)
- We’re committing this value to this activity aka the total-budget
- We’re committing this value to this partner
The first use case is supported by the fact that publishers are not encouraged to use the `budget`` element to declare the total budget of an activity (and a total-budget element does not exist in the activity standard - only the org standard)
The second use case supports the “full-chain” transparency, referenced by Herman van Loon :
Since the current standard only supports the ‘Commitment’ as a transaction type, it is impossible to distinguish between incoming and outgoing commitments. Without this element full chain transparency is therefore not possible.
And so - here could be our difficulty. If the same code is wide open to two use cases, we face difficulties in getting datasets to work together, potentially.
To sum: Renaming (or clarifying) Commitment to Outgoing Commitment may start to make things clearer for implementation, although we should also be minded that this code is in widespread use.
(In trying to pick up and type up this discussion, it does seem to make the case for a total-budget
element in the activity standard, or perhaps some work on the budget/@type
attribute/codelist)
Now that, since version 2.01, we have a nonsemantic numeric code this makes absolute sense. To ensure that this does not confuse DAC reporters I think the description should explicitly relate this code to the DAC “commitment”.
These are good points.
I’m not sure we have documented rules about what transactions might exist to accountable and implementing organisations, so in current guidance I couldn’t find anything that would exclude these from being the recipients of a transaction, but it might be that guidance should be tightened up to make clear that commitment and disbursement transactions should always go to an organisation listed as ‘implementing’.
Tim, I’m confused by your table, specifically the presence of “accountable or extending organisation” in the receiver-org column for commitment and disbursement. (Sorry, I cannot seem to put a quote from your post.)
Granted, these 2 categories have always been somewhat unclear to us, but let me try to unpack it somewhat.
The “accountable organisation” is defined in the standard as responsible for oversight and outcomes. Additional guidance explained early on that this is the organisation we sign an MoU with, such as a partner gouvernment ministry. An MoU is not a contractual instrument and does not lead to funding flows, so it would not seem possible to have the accountable org as the recipient of a commitment or disbursement. Would you have a real-life example of when this would happen?
The “extending organisation” is defined as managing the activity budget and on behalf of the funder. If the extending organisation is receiving or disbursing funding itself, how does it differ from an “implementing organisation”? Would you have a concrete example? Otherwise, I wonder if the extending org isn’t simply be an implementing org one step higher in the delivery chain (ie we give funding to Org A and code it as our implementing org. Org A gives funding to Org B and codes it as its implementing org, and so on).