Discussion

IATI Technical Team update

Bill Anderson
Bill Anderson • 15 March 2018

We have had a busy start to the year. Here’s an update on a few key projects…

Registry switchover

As announced in January, we’ve secured a new hosting arrangement for the IATI Registry to improve the experience for users. The team has been busy preparing for the migration and the switchover to our new CKAN provider, Derilinx will be completed by 30th March.

Please note: users will not be able to access the Registry during a brief period of downtime (timings to be confirmed) to allow for the migration to be complete. After the switch, users should not notice any difference in the way they interact with the Registry.

Website project

The team have been working on implementing IATI’s website project and by the beginning of May will release a beta version of a new website with:

  • Redesigned/rewritten content to replace aidtransparency.net
  • Redesigned/rewritten content replacing the guidance section on the iatistandard.org site. NB. This phase of the project does not include a redesign of the reference section which is derived from the standard’s schema and codelists.
  • A home page with descriptions and links to all IATI legacy assets (all existing IATI maintained websites)

The new site will be live by the end of June. The team is working in conjunction with designers fffunction and content specialists The Happy Seven.

User feedback

We would like to encourage the IATI community to take part in a number of user testing exercises for the new website. To begin with, we are seeking help that will inform the structure of the new guidance section of the website. Can you give us 10-15 minutes of your time to complete this exercise. We will also shortly be inviting you to review the site’s new information architecture using an interactive online tool.

IATI Datastore

The Governing Board will take a decision in the near future on the redevelopment of the Datastore. In anticipation of some or all of the project being outsourced the Technical Team has begun preparation of a detailed specification which will be shared with the community in April.

CSV2IATI

We are decommissioning the publishing tool CSV2IATI in the first week of April. Over the past 12 months we have been supporting organisations to transition off this tool and to start publishing at the latest versions of the IATI Standard, this is either with a tool provided by the IATI community or through an internal reporting system. If you still need support to transition off CSV2IATI please contact the IATI Technical Team at: support@iatistandard.org.

Comments (2)

Mark Brough
Mark Brough

Thanks for the update, Bill Anderson ! One quick question…

Image removed. bill_anderson:

IATI Datastore

The Governing Board will take a decision in the near future on the redevelopment of the Datastore. In anticipation of some or all of the project being outsourced the Technical Team has begun preparation of a detailed specification which will be shared with the community in April.

Has there been a decision taken to redevelop the Datastore rather than just improve and maintain the existing one (or adopt an alternative existing solution)? It would be good to understand the rationale for this. Has there has been some kind of cost/benefit analysis of the various options?

Also, is this Datastore working group still happening? It seems like such a group should help guide this decision rather than only monitor its implementation.

Mark Brough
Mark Brough

Just following up on this. Would be great to know the answers to these two questions:

  1. whether a decision has already been taken to redevelop the Datastore;
  2. if the Datastore working group is still happening (just bumped this other thread)

Thanks Bill Anderson IATI Technical Team


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