Open Data increases Data Quality

IATI, the International Aid Transparency Initiative started in September 2008 in Accra, is now open for business! In July 2010 the first decisive step ahead was made by the IATI Steering Committee, who adopted the standards for the first implementation phase. By now also the beta version of the registry for aid data is online and functioning, so that donors can upload data and thereby make it more accessible to a wider audience. The Worldbank, UNDP and DFID have been among the first to uploaded data. But also data from the Global Fund, the Netherlands and Spain can be found in the registry. The goal of IATI is for most signatories to publish some data via the registry until the next High Level Meeting in Busan in 2011.

At the recent IATI technical advisory group (TAG) meeting in Cookham (UK) the quality of data made publicly available is still a major concern for donors. How can they assure that data published is sufficiently correct and how to deal with erroneous data that is open to all. In this context a parallel open data initiative is interesting. The Multi-Donor-Trust-Fund of the UNDP started to publish their data only recently and like for IATI donors, internal worries about data quality were considerable. However, according to Anders Thomsen, Senior Portfolio Manager of the The Multi-Donor-Trust-Fund, these worries were largely unfounded. Some of the data published was, indeed, erroneous. But because it was open, different stakeholders were able to detect errors and mistakes could be corrected. The experience of the British development agency DFID was similar. Within a very short delay after DFID published their data, the data quality increased significantly and the DFID staff itself benefitted from better access to data.

The range of topics discussed at the TAG meeting underscores that there is still a long way to go to fulfill the promise of Accra: Technical implementation, the challenge of budget alignment, further data and document standards, aid transparency in the NGO sector and accessibilty of data were discussed. The participants also highlighted the need to increase communication efforts. Even within donor agencies signatory to IATI many staff members are not aware of this initiative.