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A walkthrough of the IATI Registry
| What is it? | The home of IATI data: the place to download IATI data in the datasets as they are provided by reporting organisations. |
| Who is it useful for? | People wanting to download data in the way that reporting organisations have structured it in xml, or csv, which you can open in a standard spreadsheet application. For example, if you are a publisher wanting to see how other organisations have published their data. |
| Give me an example of what I can get here… | A CSV or XML file of Asian Development Bank Activity in Bangladesh. |
| Bear in mind… | The data here is structured as provided by the reporting organisation – this means it might well be too “split up” for your needs, unless you’re focusing on how donor organisations are publishing their data. If you want to look at, for example, all activities by a certain donor in a certain country, the CSV Query Builder below is a better option for you. |
| Where can I go for further guidance? | Using IATI data |
Note: “publishing organisation” and “reporting organisation” are used somewhat interchangeably, to signify the organisation who is making the data available and publishing it to IATI. In both cases, it’s normally a donor organisation – ie. the organisation giving the money – or an ‘implementing organisation’ – ie. an organisation receiving the money from a donor and actually carrying out the project.
Quick users’ guide:
Go to http://iatiregistry.org/dataset – here you have two options for how to specify what you want.
You can either type keywords yourself, in the top box, for example here: Bangladesh, to see all files that mention ‘bangladesh’.
With this search, 28 datasets come up.
Under each file, you’ll see four options:
View Metadata: see data about the data – for example, the date it was published, the identifier of the publishing organisation, how many activities it includes, and the date range that these activities cover.
Download: clicking on this will give you the data in XML format, usually opening directly in your browser.
Preview: this uses a tool built by AidInfoLabs to allow you to ‘preview’ the data directly in your browser. It will bring up a screen that looks like this:
It can be a good idea to check on here before downloading big files to make sure they’re the ones with the information you need.
CSV: this will give you a download of the data in CSV format.
Another way of using this is through the drop down menus below; none of the fields are mandatory, and you don’t have to use them all, so just use the ones which are most relevant to what you’re looking for.
Remember though, the data here is structured and organised by how the publishing organisation has published it to IATI. Here’s a quick explanation of what the field names and options mean:
Source: who is publishing the data
Primary source: data which is published by the organisation which is carrying out the activities.
Secondary source: data published by a third party about the activities of another organisation.
Secondary publisher: specify which secondary source you’re interested in. You can ignore this field, unless you’re particularly interested in organisations publishing data about others’ activities.
Publisher: specify which publishing organisation you’re interested in (primary source). This is a long list to choose from!
Publisher Country: specify where the publishing organisation(s) should be based.
Organisation Type: specify what kind of organisation the publishing organisation should be. See ‘Jargon busting the Aid World’ for an explanation of the different types of organisations.
Recipient Country: specify in which country the activities should be taking place (ie. which country is ‘receiving’ the money, or the aid)
File type: this specifies whether you’re interested in finding out data about the organisation itself (Organisation) or about activities they have carried out (Activity). If you’re not sure, you can always leave it blank.