IATI Hub: Generate IATI files

More and more organizations are realizing the benefits of publishing open data on their activities, funding streams, and results using the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) data standard. Many donors now require that grantees and recipients report on their progress in IATI format. Publishing organizations are also able to better learn from, coordinate and collaborate with their partners and peers using IATI as a common language. 

DevResults' IATI Hub provides users a single place to generate IATI data from across their site. Once you have configured your site for IATI and you have filled in activity file elements, you can use this page to learn how to generate and download an IATI files to publish on the IATI Registry.

On this page, you can learn how to:

Generate an Activity File

To access the IATI Hub, go to the Administration menu and click on IATI.

On the Activity File tab, you will see an Activity Index. If desired, use the query tools on the left hand side to filter the list down to the set of activities for which you want to publish data. If only certain donors require IATI, you can use the Awarding organization filter to quickly identify activities they fund. Alternatively, you can create an activity tag (e.g. 'IATI') and assign it to activities that are suitable for publication, then use the Tag filter to identify those activities.

Whether you have applied filters to your activity list or not, use the checkboxes in the left-most column of the table to select which activities you want to include in the activity file. You can quickly select all by clicking on the checkbox in the header row.

To start the activity file wizard, click on the blue Create IATI Activity File button on the bottom right. This will open a window for you to select which reporting periods for which you want to include results and indicator data. Similar to the activity index, you can use the search bar, column sort, and checkboxes to select the appropriate number of reporting periods (n.b. reporting periods that have no indicator data will not be included in the export even if they are checked). When you are ready to proceed, click the green Validate Data button to run a series of quality checks on your activity file.

If issues are found, you can click on the View item links to find where in the site data is missing. 

If no issues are found, you can click on the green Download XML button.

To publish your activity file on the IATI Registry, you will need to post the file somewhere on your website or server, create a direct publicly accessible link to the XML file, then register that link on the IATI Registry. You can find detailed instructions on publishing IATI data on IATI's website.

Note: If your activity file takes a long time to validate or download, contact help@devresults.com and we can enable asynchronous, background processing for larger files. Once enabled, small files will validate and download in the browser as usual, but large files will be emailed to you as a download link once the validation process has completed.

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Generate an Organization File

Just as with activity files, go to the Administration menu and click on IATI to access the IATI Hub.

On the Organization File tab, you will see four tables for financial data (Budgets, Budget Lines, Expenses, and Expense Lines) as well as a button to add Document Links. Each table can be populated independently, but it is best to start with Budgets and Expenses, as the Total Budget Period and Total Expense Period (in the Budget Lines and Expense Lines tables respectively) will refer to these fields in a dropdown. 

For guidance on what financial information to include in your organization file, see IATI's guidance, or refer to your donor's IATI guidance, e.g. the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs' IATI Guidelines or the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) IATI Guidelines.

Once you have populated all relevant fields, click on the blue Create IATI Organization button on the bottom right. This will validate the data and run a series of quality checks on your organization file.

If issues are found, you can click on the View item links to find where in the site data is missing. 

If no issues are found, you can click on the green Download XML button.

To publish your organization file on the IATI Registry, you will need to post the file somewhere on your website or server, create a direct publicly accessible link to the XML file, then register that link on the IATI Registry. You can find detailed instructions on publishing IATI data on IATI's website here.

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Didn't answer your question? Please email us at help@devresults.com.