Via some work with a publishing organisation I took at look at the Policy Marker & Significance code lists:
The source for these is the OECD DAC codelist spreadsheet.
Where I am slightly “confused” is that the OECD DAC list has a specific value of (blank):
(blank) not screened
Whereas a value of 0 is different:
0 not targeted
It is my understanding that a (blank) value in a CRS return indicates a specific choice in the data return, it is not purely a missing value. This indicates something different to a 0, conceptually.
However, I am unclear how this (blank) can be expressed via IATI XML, because:
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The IATI PolicySignificance codelist does not contain a (blank) value
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It does not seem to be useful to publish the @significance attribute with a blank value, or missing entirely - eg:
policy-marker vocabulary="1" code="3" significance=""
or
policy-marker vocabulary="1" code="3"
I’m interested to know if others have discovered this, and how they have worked with/around it. Or - if it is not an issue.
I am quite sure that some Publishers are using ‘0’ as their default value - this disserves no respect, and should not be encouraged nor set precedence. We must make sure that empty fields are understood correctly. Even if that should lead us to do strange things like adding ‘-1’ to the values - meaning ‘blank’, if we find reason to doubt the communicative power of absent fields.