Guidance

FCDO IATI Guidelines

Updated 19 April 2023

Foreword

In the UK we are proud of our democracy and openness. We are given access to information to make choices and have a say in decisions which affect our lives. In March 2021 the UK published Global Britain in a Competitive Age, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (the Integrated Review), that describes the government’s vision for the UK’s role in the world over the next decade.

On transparency, it set out the ambition for the UK Government to work with others to support open societies and open government, to maintain the highest standards of evidence and transparency for all our ODA investments, and to make greater use of data and digital tools to support policy making and improve transparency. The commitment to openness, democratic values, technology and international standards was again reflected in the UK Government’s Strategy for International Development published in May 2022 and reiterated in the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh.

FCDO’s predecessor, DFID, was a founder, key supporter and member of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The goal of IATI is to improve the transparency of development and humanitarian resources and their results to address poverty and crises. IATI is actively supported by stakeholders that are involved in all aspects of development co-operation – including government donors, multilateral organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Investment Funds, private providers and Partner Governments.

The UK Government publishes information about the Official Development Assistance (ODA) activities it funds to the IATI Standard in line with the National Data Strategy. In turn, UK Government departments may encourage or mandate partners to publish information about those activities to the same standard.

The FCDO encourages, and in most agreements mandates, implementing partners of the UK’s aid, including private contractors, to publish organisation and activity data in accordance with the IATI Standard. The FCDO IATI Guidelines provide information about which fields of the standard it expects partners to publish to and how to do this. For new publishers, further information can be found on the IATI website under publishing data. This document replaces the previous policy and technical papers titled DFID IATI guidelines.

Introduction

FCDO invests in aid transparency because it helps build trust, improves accountability, guides better decision making and helps to tackle corruption. Open and accessible information can support citizens to understand the development decisions that affect them and help build the knowledge they need to hold their governments and development actors to account. It also provides development organisations with access to information on programmes being run by other organisations which, if used well, can improve efficiency and effectiveness.

The purpose of this guide is to provide organisations in receipt of FCDO funding, “partners”, with clear and accessible information on their responsibilities to produce relevant, timely and high-quality data, under transparency provisions within their agreement or contract with FCDO.

What is the International Aid Transparency Initiative?

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is a global initiative to improve the transparency and accountability of aid funding on both international development and humanitarian activities. The IATI Standard allows any organisation involved in international development to publish information on funded activities, partners, location, results, transactions and relevant documents. Anyone and any machine can explore and use that information, including to help inform decisions and reduce duplication. IATI is an international organisation funded by its members and administered by a Secretariat. Secretariat staff manage the day-to-day running of IATI and are accountable to the Members’ Assembly and the governing board, made up of representatives elected by IATI members. For more information, please see IATI Governance.

How is the information my organisation produces for IATI used?

FCDO’s ambition is that developing countries can use the information in IATI to inform them of work taking place in their country and to support their financial decision making. In FCDO we want staff to be able to use the data provided to help improve internal decision making. Examples of use include:

• IATI data is used to inform DevTracker (our public information portal for UK aid spending) that shows the public how UK aid is spent and who we give taxpayers’ money to
• our programme teams will be able to better understand the reach of initiatives and understand what collective efforts are being made by the community in addressing development challenges
• our central teams will be able to see the relationships between downstream partners across different sectors or countries
• our policy teams will be able to better understand priorities across sectors, location and types of interventions
• our executive management and ministerial teams will be able to see more comprehensive high level portfolio data
• ministers, parliament and the public will be able to see what we spend taxpayers’ money on and which organisations we fund to achieve those objectives
• developing countries can use the information alongside the rest of the data in IATI to consider where best to focus their resources

To achieve this, it is essential that FCDO’s partners use the IATI open data standard correctly, following the guidelines to publish timely, relevant and accessible good quality data.

What do I need to do?

If your agreement with us requires you to publish to IATI, your organisation will need to first register with IATI as a publisher and receive your organisation identifier. You then publish an organisation file linked to that identifier that contains organisational information such as budgets and links to information such as annual reports or relevant web pages about your organisation. Following that you publish an activity file related to the agreement you have with FCDO at least quarterly. This includes information on activity descriptions, finances and who you are funding. More details of FCDO requirements can be found below.

You will want to think about your existing data, information or financial management structure when deciding how best to publish your activity data. You may need to publish directly from your accounts systems if you have a large number of activities or, for a smaller number, you can use an intermediary tool or service such as IATI Publisher (more information below). This IATI publishing infographic gives an outline of the publishing process, with further information on the IATI publishing pages. You will also want to consider what skills you may need in your organisation to support this process.

What support is there?

Every organisation creating and sharing IATI data is responsible for producing timely, relevant and high-quality data. The IATI open data standard is maintained by the IATI technical team which is part of the IATI Secretariat. There is advice for new publishers on IATI’s website and technical queries on publishing and the IATI Standard generally can be directed to support@iatistandard.org

FCDO-specific queries can be directed to iati-feedback@fcdo.gov.uk

IATI has launched its own free data publishing tool, IATI Publisher, which enables organisations to publish their data on development and humanitarian activities according to the XML format required by the IATI Standard. The new tool is designed to support small or medium sized organisations (or those with only a limited number of activities), aiming to be simple and intuitive and ultimately make publishing easier for organisations. IATI Publisher enables data to be provided either by completing online forms or via CSV file using the tool’s Bulk Upload feature and it runs automatic checks (via the IATI Validator) for errors before publishing data.

There are a range of other tools and services that can support you to create and publish IATI data and large organisations, delivering more than 100 activities, are specifically advised not to use IATI Publisher. A full list of tools and services can be found on the IATI website, with free or paid for services offering different levels of support and automation for different size organisations.

If you currently use another publishing tool and want to migrate your existing data over to IATI Publisher, please contact support@iatistandard.org to discuss the possibility of migration.

Larger spenders may choose to build a bespoke, in-house system that can generate your data in the format you need for IATI, which can be more cost effective than using a third-party tool.

Organisations are expected to publish an IATI dataset that validates against the corresponding IATI schema version. The IATI Validator is a useful tool for checking your data before publishing (Note: this checks the structure of the published XML, not the content).

Why is this important?

If you do not publish your information to IATI you may not be eligible for funds in future. If your organisation is new to publishing to IATI, you will need to give guidance on or empower and resource technical staff to organise your data effectively to publish to the IATI Standard. The information you publish alongside other data in IATI can also be used for your own organisation’s purposes. For example, to:

• highlight your own spread of work
• explore what other organisations are doing in the same space as your own
• identify gaps in services in some countries
• research where donors are active or support research efforts in key sectors

Take a look at the information you can explore at d-portal.org and how others are using IATI data.

Compliance and monitoring

What level of compliance is required by my organisation?

Clauses are included in our standard Accountable Grant Agreements, Memoranda of Understanding and contract documents that explain FCDO’s transparency expectations from our directly funded and downstream partners. Refer to your agreement with FCDO and the relevant Code of Conduct thresholds for detail.

Non-fulfilment

It could impact on continued funding if these requirements are not met. FCDO Programme Managers will advise partners where this is the case, bearing in mind the different wording in the agreements which are in place. There will also be some cases where FCDO partners face genuine challenges to making progress and Programme Managers will take that into account when deciding what action to take.

How will you monitor this?

The level of monitoring will depend upon the agreement signed with the partner. Our due diligence assessments prior to agreeing to fund include questions about an organisation’s ability to publish to IATI. Methods of monitoring may include:

• the IATI Dashboard
• DevTracker
• the IATI Validator
• data on d-portal.org
• discussions through Annual Reviews

On occasion we may spot check specific types of data or partner and provide feedback to partners where work needs to be carried out.

Sensitive information and exclusions

What if my information is too sensitive to publish?

It is the responsibility of each implementing partner to determine what information can and cannot be published, laying this out in a publicly available exclusions policy, linked to your IATI Registry publisher account.

FCDO requests organisations to review sensitive activities on a case-by-case basis, to reach a balanced and proportionate approach that ensures essential safety while still publishing useful and meaningful IATI data. The organisation must also protect personal information covered under the General Data Protection Regulation Act, for example, by not publishing the names of individuals.

Excluding sensitive information is especially relevant to partners who work in extremely complex situations such as conflict and humanitarian, human rights, good governance and anti-corruption. In such situations, partners may want to exclude some or all details of an activity to protect those involved or commercial information. There are many ways to adapt your data to remove sensitive detail while still communicating the nature of your activities. Some examples are:

• anonymising the implementing (or funding) organisation
• publishing a recipient region (consisting of several countries) instead of a recipient country or location if this is too sensitive
• adapting the description of the activity

The partner may wish to discuss exclusion of information relating to a particular programme with the FCDO Programme Manager.

What has changed since the last update?

The previous publications referred to as ‘DFID IATI Guidelines’ – policy and technical – have been superseded by this guidance. Changes are summarised below:

• all references to the Department for International Development (DFID) have been changed to Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
• two separate policy and technical documents have been combined into one simpler and shorter document
• the opening policy section has been updated
• inclusion of a section on available publishing tools
• inclusion of more information on how data is being used or could be if it was good quality
• clarity added on location/beneficiary country requirements
• clarity on how to link up information with UK Government activity, and downstream activity
• greater emphasis on importance of downstream partner publishing
• checked/updated links for new publisher guidance on IATI pages and signposting to IATI support
• removed some of the detailed technical information that is available on the IATI website
• updated the email address for queries
• changed the font in line with British Dyslexia Association guidance

On the publication fields in the table under technical requirements FCDO has:

• removed the requirement to “publish Annual forward planning budget for funded organisations”, and “annual forward planning budget for countries” in the org file
• removed the requirement in the activity files to publish the “extending” organisation
• amended from “yes” to “if applicable” – recipient region, incoming commitments and outgoing commitments

Technical requirements

FCDO expects all organisations receiving ODA funding, with the relevant clause in their FCDO agreement, to publish the following to IATI:

• IATI organisation file: the file that describes your organisation
• IATI activity file: detail on the activities your organisation carries out

The activity file should cover at minimum your activities funded by FCDO and be updated at least once every quarter. Both datasets should meet the general requirements below, which will be reviewed occasionally and may change with internationally agreed IATI Standard updates or new insights.

Not all data elements (or fields) of either the IATI organisation or activity file are required for reporting to FCDO. In the sections below, it is indicated which fields are required and which are not.

The more information available, the more useful IATI publications become, and the better the insights to improve development outcomes.

General requirements

IATI version	IATI standard version 2.03 or higher is recommended. Version 2.02 is still accepted
Frequency	Organisations are expected to update their activity file quarterly and organisation file annually
Language (of descriptions/narrative)	Preferably English. Narratives in other languages can be included if available
Scope	At minimum, your IATI activity data should cover all activities funded by FCDO, as specified in your agreement. Where programmes or activities are co-funded, match-funded or joint funded you should also include the funds and commitments being provided by third parties.

IATI organisation file

The IATI organisation file is used to describe your organisation. It is designed to report forward-looking aggregate budget information for the reported organisations and planned future budgets to recipient institutions or countries. The IATI organisational file is also used to provide links to relevant public documents that are not related to one or more specific activities. It is expected that every organisation publishing IATI data should include one organisation file, which is updated annually. The below highlights the minimum required from FCDO, however if you wish to add more to your organisation file, please do.

Organisation Data

Annual forward planning budget for organisation	Yearly forward-looking information on the whole organisation or agency budget, covering current and future years where known	Yes
Annual forward planning budget for funded organisations	The annual amounts your organisation plans to disburse to each of your partner organisations	No
Annual forward planning budget for countries	Yearly forward-looking budget for each country worked in by the reporting organisation	No
Organisation documents	Documents relating to the organisation This includes: Annual reports that may contain the above information, strategic plans, exclusion policies, other documents that provide relevant information on the organisation and its scope of work	Yes

Those already publishing will note that FCDO has removed the requirements in the above categories: to publish annual forward planning budget for funded organisations, and annual forward planning budget for countries.

IATI activity file

The following table describes the elements to be published in the IATI activity file. For the formal specification, please refer to the IATI standard summary table.

Ideally, all information relating to the same development activity should be published as a single IATI activity as this makes third party use of the data more efficient and avoids duplication. Data should be cumulative (e.g. if publishing every quarter, the updated activity will include the quarter being reported on, the previous quarter reported last time, and so on). It will also enable amendments to be made to existing data.

No data should be removed or deleted from published files. It is intended that once published, data remains permanently available. There may however be occasions where data needs to be temporarily hidden for reasons of sensitivity (e.g. funding to partners in Afghanistan in 2021).

FCDO requests organisations to review sensitive activities on a case-by-case basis, to determine a balanced situation between safety and publishing useful and meaningful IATI data.

Important: Linking your activity data to FCDO

Publishing the links between you and your partners creates what we call network transparency: making the entire chain between funding organisation(s) and various levels of implementing organisations visible. To achieve this – rather than publishing isolated datasets – it is important to clearly define the relations between organisations and activities. In IATI this is done primarily through activity identifiers.

FCDO programme level activity identifiers are currently in the format “GB-GOV-1-XXXXXX” or “GB-1-XXXXXX”, with component or project level activity identifiers GB-GOV-1-XXXXXX-XXX or GB-1-XXXXXX-XXX. They are made up of the 6-digit FCDO programme ID, or the 9-digit programme and component level ID, which your programme manager will be able to provide, pre-fixed by FCDO’s IATI organisation identifier (“GB-GOV-1-” for more recent programmes numbered 300000 or higher, “GB-1-” for older programmes).

This activity identifier should be included in your IATI data each time you reference FCDO:

• against incoming fund/commitment transactions (as the provider activity identifier)
• under Participating Organisations (when listing FCDO as “funding”)

Identification

Reporting Organisation	Unique identifier and name of organisation reporting the activity	Yes
IATI activity identifier	Constructed with the Reporting Organisation unique identifier and the organisation’s chosen activity number	Yes
Other Activity Identifier	An internal reference number for the activity	Not required

Basic Activity Information

Title	Title of the activity	Yes
Description	Meaningful description of the activity (minimum short paragraph)	Yes
Activity Status	Status of the activity (Pipeline/Implementation/…)	Yes
Activity Date	Planned start and end dates of the activity	Yes
Contact Info	Contact address and email for the reporting organisation. [can be generic enquiry email address]	Yes
Activity Scope	The geographical scope of the activity: regional, national, subnational, etc	Not required

Participating Organisations

Participating Organisation Note: If you work with organisations who also publish to IATI, you are strongly encouraged to use their unique IATI organisation identifiers	Funding (the organisation funding the project): Organisation Name, Organisation Type, Organisation Identifier. This will often be FCDO if reporting information funded by FCDO. If funded by other donors, include those also	Yes
	Implementing (the organisation carrying out the actual work of the project): Organisation Name, Organisation Type and Organisation Identifier	Yes
	Accountable: (the organisation responsible for managing the delivery of the project) Organisation Name, Organisation Type and Organisation Identifier	Yes
	Extending (the organisation which extends the funds e.g. a treasury function. Likely only applicable for bilateral donors): Organisation Name, Organisation Type and Organisation Identifier	Not required

Geopolitical Information

Recipient Country	The country or countries that benefit from the activity – i.e. where impact is felt. These should be eligible for Official Development Assistance (ODA) and may differ from the location of the activity. For example, activities undertaken in the territory of the donor country (e.g. research scholarships, training courses) should be assigned to individual recipient countries where the services are performed for the benefit of those countries	Yes
Recipient Region	The region(s) that benefit from the activity (if in addition to, or more relevant than specifying recipient countries) Note: Multiple countries and regions can be reported, in which case the percentage attribute must be used to specify the share of total commitments across all reported countries and regions. When using percentages, all percentages across countries and regions must add up to 100%	If applicable
Location	Location of the activity or its beneficiaries on a sub-national level	If available

Classifications

Sector	The sector(s) that the activity benefits according to the OECD DAC CRS Purpose Code (5 digit)	Yes
Policy Marker	Indicators which track key policy issues	Yes
Collaboration Type	Whether the resource flow is bilateral or multilateral	Not required
Default Flow Type	Whether the activity is funded by Official Development Assistance (ODA), Other Official Flows (OOF), etc	Yes
Default Finance Type	Financing mechanism – grant/loan/capital/export credit etc	Yes
Default Aid Type	Type of assistance provided e.g. project-type interventions, core-contributions to multilateral institutions, core support to NGOs	Yes
Default Tied Status	Whether there are restrictions on the aid (Y/N)	Yes
Country Budget Items	Alignment of activities with both the functional and administrative classifications used in the recipient country’s Chart of Accounts	Not required

Financial

Budget	Total budget for the activity over its lifetime (use budget type: original), split annually	Yes
Planned Disbursement	Planned payment schedule for future disbursements	If available
Capital Spend	The percentage of the total commitment that is for capital spending	Not required
Transactions	Incoming Commitments	If applicable
	Incoming Funds Note: Funding received from different funders should be separated out. Linking: It is essential to reference FCDO’s provider activity identifier against each incoming fund transaction from FCDO. Refer to the section “Linking your activity data to FCDO” above this table for more detail	Yes
	Outgoing Commitments (promise of money to another organisation)	If applicable
	Outgoing Disbursements (money being passed to another organisation)	Yes
	Expenditure (expenses that have no recipient or involve payment to an individual – e.g. a consultant) Note: For convenience, it is recommended you aggregate expenses on quarterly basis and publish this total amount. If you wish to go into more detail, feel free to do so, but IATI is not a financial audit	Yes

Related Documents

Document Link (incl. Activity Website)	Documents relating to the activity including project proposal, Theory of Change, reports, pictures, project updates etc. A01 - Pre- and post-project impact appraisal A07 - Review of project performance and evaluation A08 - Results, outcomes and outputs Etc.	If applicable

Relations

Related Activity	Another separately reported IATI activity that is related to this one.	If applicable

Performance

Legacy Data	The legacy data element allows for the reporting of values held in a field in the reporting organisation’s system which is similar, but not identical to an IATI element	Not required
Conditions	Information on the conditions for the project	If available
Result	Data on results and indicators of the project Please take note of the following requirements: 1. Where possible, indicator values should be numeric. 2. For each indicator the baseline, target and actual values are mandatory. This is essential to assess the progress. Note that you are free to use any indicators as you see fit to publish your progress. More specific requirements are listed in Performance	If available
CRS	Additional items specific to CRS++ reporting	Not required
FSS	This section allows entry of data required for the OECD DAC Forward Spending Survey at an activity level.	Not required

Those already publishing under the previous version of these guidelines will note that FCDO has removed the requirement to publish the “extending” organisation. In addition, recipient region, incoming commitments and outgoing commitments have been amended to “if applicable”.