Using the Data Theme

Hi all. Development Gateway is preparing for some work around the use of IATI in country systems. Our 5 focus countries will be Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Madagascar. You can see a short blog I’ve written here: http://www.developmentgateway.org/news/ensuring-data-work-where-it-counts-iati-and-country-systems

It would be great to have some feedback and to hear who might be interested in coordinating (e.g. peer reviewing some of the analysis we do, providing usability testing on the tool we build, etc.).

I think we should define usage first. Creating IATI data, managing it, visualising it, analysing it. Etc.

On the topic of data use, I think it would be good to talk about the supply versus demand issue. Many organizations are working to address the supply-side needs by opening data and working to provide better quality data, but the demand-side issue remains. Many recipient countries lack the capacity to meaningfully analyze and use available data for informed decision-making. If case studies exist on how this capacity building has been successfully accomplished, and the demand-side issues addressed, it would be a good topic to explore. Many organizations are looking to better understand the demand-side issues, and it would be worthwhile to learn from those who have experience.

Yes, I think they MEANT to, but they don’t. I tried using the D-Portal in my demo in Dakar and it did not meet anyone’s needs. Openaidsearch is closer I think - though I’d be able to assess it better if I could see how our data displays.

Hello, I’ve just submitted a proposal for a workshop on IATI data use to the International Open Data Conference, same week as the TAG. Really happy to partner up if anyone is interested, or has submitted something similar? Also be good to run something similar at the TAG if there’s space. Cheers, Sarah

Hi Sarah

Without getting into too much details, many issues came up with the D-Portal from a data user’s perspective (in the Explore tab, I have not tested the others).
For instance, people want to:

• not have to scroll down the list to find a publisher (ie need a look up, or filtering by type of publisher, or at least clustering by type to ease the search)
• select more than one country, for instance to get a regional picture
• filter by sector (rather than country or donor)
• combine a search by donor, country and/or sector (ie all donors funding Infrasctrure in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador)
• click on a sector and get the definition (in fact, definitions for all fields should be available)
• disaggregate the sector (ie break down Education between the 4 sub-sector, or even better the 5-digit CRS codes)
• get the list of donors for a given sector (now we get the list of projects, it would be tedious to add them all up)
• see the receiver of a transaction (the space is there, but the information doesn’t show up)
• filter by type of aid, type of recipient etc (eg looking at the projects in Senegal, being able to only pull projects with CSOs, or projects with the government)
• have the start and end date of projects and implementing partner appear in the table of projects, to help users select relevant projects more easily

I’m sure this is not exhaustive. During my meeting, every person seemed to want to do his/her own thing - and that was within the Senegal page.

I hope this helps get people’s creativity going on how to turn the D-Portal into something better aligned to country needs.

Hi

Thanks for the really helpful feedback on improvements to d-portal - some of these are in the plans already, and we’ll look at the others too. Some are closely related to data quality. It’s great to get some perspective from potential users in partner countries (Yohanna, was it mainly donors or partner country representatives that you were demoing to in Dakar?). As a general point, there’s so much data and so many angles to approach it from that it’s easy to make things look complicated very quickly - so is useful to have feedback from partner country users.

It’s a really interesting discussion - there’s other comments in the thread about the demand side - current developments in d-portal are based around feedback from the MoF in Nepal…there’ll always be personal perspectives on what people want, but it would be great to have wider understanding of what’s needed across partner countries in using these kinds of tools and the IATI data within them.

I think data quality is a big issue in all this - and like everything (including d-portal!) is a work in progress - it would be great to engage with partner countries on these tools, but there’s a limit to what they can do with the current data, even when the tool is doing exactly what they want - I think we need to continue improving the data quality whilst developing the tools (and consulting users!)…but it’s come a long way in the last 4 years so we’ve got reason to be hopeful!

At the Foundation Center, we recently built a little app in response to a query on this discussion board a few months ago, namely an IATI to GeoJSON converter. We built one! We haven’t really put it to the test, but it definitely works at small and medium scales for relatively simple cases. This might be handy for folks who want to quickly spin up web maps of IATI data without having to fuss around too much. Let me know if anybody still thinks this would be useful, or if it might be something worth demo’ing.

jake

Hi Yohanna

Thanks for the detail on who you spoke to in Senegal.

A number of recent/current d-portal developments came out of discussions last year with MoF representatives and CSOs in Nepal - including option to view different currencies and change the year start date (to enable alignment with a country’s financial year). There’s been other demos and interaction with a variety of people from partner countries throughout the development, and obviously it’s still a work in progress. We’ll take on board your feedback from the meeting in Senegal too - but I think it’s useful to note that with such a broad and detailed dataset and a large/varied audience that there’s always different perspectives on what people need/want, and so always more you could do!

We’re increasingly getting publishers asking about their data in d-portal and particularly around where there are issues with the data, and are able to point them to where they can amend/improve the data. I’m sure all these kind of tools are useful in making the data more understandable and therefore helping publishers highlight where data needs improving.

This is a very interesting discussion happening here. I would like to chip in with some of my observations based on our direct experience in Nepal as well as based on my participation in the recent Regional Development Data usage workshop in Accra. Please find below some of my points.

• When we talk about using the data, we need to understand that data usage scenario will be inherently different for different stakeholders - donors, country governments, CSOs, media etc and create use case scenario first. Some of my initial observations on this are:

• Country governments are interested to use IATI data for comparative analysis ie. to see if the IATI data they have for particular donors/publishers matches with what they have in AIMS or not.
• CSOs within countries seem more interested to see how resources are being planned and channelled for specific sectors and their outcome.
• Local media/journalists are interested in the traceability aspect. ie. they want to create data stories by linking different different IATI identifiers and do an analysis on how resources are being spent.

• While tools like d-portal have come up with great promise to facilitate data usage, we perhaps need to pay a little more attention to the end users and have respective customisation. This is where national level d-portals come into picture. However, the million dollar question on this is whose responsibility would it be to customize and maintain d-portal at the national level

• Education and awareness around IATI is key for data usage. We often find the case that IATI is pretty much unheard of outside Aid Coordination units within respective Ministries in partner countries. At times, even people within the coordination units (except for a single focal person) are unaware of IATI. Similarly at the donor’s end, most of their country offices have no clue of what IATI is. The situation is even worst at the end of CSOs, Media and other stakeholders. We perhaps need to have a clear strategy on doing outreach to these respective stakeholders so as to ensure uptake of IATI data

• If we can facilitate IATI to have more publishers (not only donors at the top) publishing and linking different activities together, we can expect IATI to fill the gap of traceability. This is something that will create more demand and usage of IATI data for sure. I know that it is easier said than done. However, we could possibly do some pilot traceability cases and build cases so that the interest on IATI is there at least.

• We need to link with local tech and open data communities. Somehow, open data stakeholders at the country level are not aware of IATI. They could be real agents for data usage. Eg. organizing IATI hackathon at the country level could really see intersting tools and visualizations coming along. Moreover, these will be an opportunity for us to educate people and make them use data

• Last but not the least, demand and usage should be facilitated to a certain extent. We cannot simply expect data to be used organically and focus only on the supply side. Perhaps, this is something that partner countries and donors need to jointly embrace as part of IATI country pilots.

I think this is a great example for using IATI Data. Did you do any validation of the data or tried it in some reports?
Also, how are you dealing with updates of the data?

Hi all, we (Bond) would be interested in running a session at the TAG looking at this issue.We currently support NGOs to share information using IATI, and we have just started a new phase of work that has two aims - to increase the quality, consistency, frequency and amount of data shared by working directly with the largest NGOs on their internal processes and systems, and to research and model uses of the IATI data within the NGO community. NGOs are an essential part of the ‘aid value chain’ in that they reach directly into communities and also in many cases support communities to engage in advocacy on local and national government transparency. It would be great to bring together all those looking at the same issues so that we can collaborate and share knowledge, issues and ideas. What do you think?

I would echo the sentiments above, I think there has been good progress made. A tool that weaves together all the IATI data to make the information and insights more discoverable is important, despite the present data gaps. I think D-Portal and Open Aid Search are great steps in this direction which can continue to be refined. I particularly agreed with Yohanna’s suggestions for future improvements needed and Bibhsan’s point that stakeholders will be looking to derive different insights. Greater discoverability will fuel a feedback loop to spur greater data quality.

An important use of the data is to expose the still appalling sparseness of the data, and the poor quality of much of what has been submitted. Saying this could be taken as a kick in the teeth of the hundreds of people who have worked hard on marshalling and improving the data, but it shouldn’t be. Technical facilitation can only do its honourable best in the absence of strong political will to produce good-quality data.

There are strong structural reasons why so many governments and aid agencies have not produced data in respectable quantity, quality and format. Aid projects are difficult; they produce actions and results which have many potentially controversial and embarrassing aspects. As an aidworker I often habitually glossed things over in my reports; this was the natural thing to do. However, the quality and contents of results-reporting is near the thick end of the wedge. The participation, if any, of most donors and other aid-agencies is still nearer the thin end, merely disclosing things like dates and financial numbers. One can understand why they are nervous about letting the wedge go in much further.

This is not a counsel of despair. Politically, a lot has been achieved in Accra, Busan and elsewhere, and more political will can be created. What I am arguing is to avoid needlessly de-politicizing the challenge.

One important form of de-politicization is serving the illusion that current and upcoming information systems are producing a consistent registry and map of what aid is doing. At best they are likely to hold a trove of nuggets, and afford a means of exposing transparency deficits. At worst, they make people think that transparency and efficient governance are (almost) in place: that the matter is being taken care of. I suspect that Mohinga (see Leigh_Mitchell’s post, above) is a case in point. Yes, the clarity and smooth functioning of the interface and dashboards are impressive. But that’s part of the problem. For all its ease, how many people go beyond that, and login, and get past the interesting charts (based on aggregations of incomplete and questionable numbers), and find the list of projects, and go down clicking the projects and then the ‘results’ tabs? If you do, you’ll not find many precise accounts of activities or results, even pertaining to projects well past their ‘end’ date. And I don’t thing that’s just because it’s work in progress. I think you’ve reached an invisible wall.

So what do we do as data-technicians? We take a realistic view of the limitations of the data for purposes of techno-governance. We caution against projects based on this premise. We don’t persist in acting as if the data is smooth, but improve our maps of where it is good, bad and non-existent. (The recently increased IATI focus on data-quality is a good move in this direction, but we need to go much further.) We should see ourselves more often as making maps of the data for guerrilla fighters (including many practising aidworkers and government workers as well as pro-democracy activists) rather than as using the inadequate data in a vain attempt to map something real for the state-planning bureaucrats.

I’ve started trying to help the guerrillas through AidOpener.org, and am grateful for the friendly and effective assistance given by the IATI Support team.

From the perspective of a donor/publisher, I believe we’ve gone as far as we can on the inside/stick side to improve data quality. Unless our project officers SEE the data they’re putting out, see that field x or y is missing or erroneous or out-of-date, no amount of poking or cajoling will make them fix it. On the other hand, as soon as they see the data, they want to start using it themselves and have a vested interest in its quality. That’s the carrot.

If tools are so simple to do, why not give it a try? I’m convinced it would go a long way in improving the data from those already publishing, and help convince others to start publishing.

There are quite a lot of websites and IATI visualisations already out in the field. Almost all of them focus on the efforts of a single publisher. Almost a year ago we did a visualisation ouselves together with Cordaid:

IATI visualisation Cordaid

Our experience was that as long as we limited ourselves to visualizing the data of one publisher, everything is quite straightforward. The data mongering could be done within a few days. Making the visualisation itself can be done in a day. The problems arise when you want to combine the data of multiple publishers. The amount of data mongering explodes and every new addition of a publisher leads to new problems. Each publisher uses IATI in a different way. For almost all publishers it is not possible to link data with others because of the lack of good activity and organisation references! So when it boils down to getting insight in the network, we still have an enormous challenge. In my opinion just making more visualisations or having more tooling, will be insufficient to accomplish this.

Shouldn’t we move as a community from just being transparent about your own activities, to being transparent as a network? Shouldn’t we use IATI data to support better decision making about how to achieve development goals? The key question is: how we want IATI to evolve? Are we content with the current status quo or not? What gets measured gets done, so how should our transparency efforts be measured? When is IATI succesfull? If we do it right, chances are that IATI will be known and valued by all stakeholders because you can get insights which would not be attainable in any other way. IATI will ‘sell’ itself.

I don not have the answers on all these questions, but I think they are worth considering.