Virtual Community Exchange 3 - Agenda

Virtual Community Exchange 3 - Agenda

Dear IATI Community,

Please find below the agenda of the Virtual Community Exchange taking place on Tuesday 28 June 13:00-16:30 (UTC). All sessions will have live interpretation (French/Spanish/English) and will be hosted on our own Zoom Event-Space (instructions will follow shortly). 

If you have haven't registered yet, please do so by clicking here.

Opening (13:00-13:25 UTC / 09:00-09:25 EST)

Description: After opening remarks by the Chair of the IATI Governing Board (Henry Asor Nkang) we will feature a few use-cases of IATI Data: Henry Asor Nkang (Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning of Nigeria) will update the wider Community on the IATI Regional Workshops in Kigali and Abuja, followed by Rebecca Gribble (Adjunct instructor at Georgetown University) who will share how IATI data was used in her academic publication on COVID-19 aid flows targeted at mental health issues, ending with a key-note presentation by UN OCHA. The Centre for Humanitarian Data (UN OCHA) will give an update on using humanitarian IATI data following the COVID-19 dashboard and report.

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Henry Asor Nkang       Rebecca Gribble

Speakers: Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning of Nigeria, Georgetown University, and UN OCHA

Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning of Nigeria    Georgetown     UNOCHA

Sessions Block 1 - 13:30-14:15 (UTC) / 09:30-10:15 (EST). View the complete VCE-agenda here

Session 1: 'FTS and IATI' by Financial Tracking Service (FTS), UNOCHA

Description: 

This session will present the Financial Tracking Service (FTS). It will highlight the current FTS workflow, as well as lessons learned to date and make suggestions on ways to increase the integration between FTS and IATI. It will also invite a discussion on the subject and on how to better link IATI and financial tracking to the Humanitarian Programme Cycle.

Speakers: Jessica J. Jordan Davila (Manager, Financial Tracking Service (FTS) Monitoring and Tools Section) and Junaid Ghani (Humanitarian Affairs Officer, Financial Tracking Service (FTS))

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Jessica J. Jordan Davila       Junaid Ghani

Host: Financial Tracking Service (FTS), UNOCHA

fts         ocha

Session 2: 'Visibility and transparency: a conversation about the importance of data on and from local organisations' by CanWaCH, Fields Data and Bike Scouts

Description:

More comprehensive data means better chances to support evidence-based decision-making. However, despite an increased commitment to “localisation” in international cooperation, there are still data gaps between local and international levels and challenges in finding information about projects that are currently running or previously completed in a particular region. Many local organisations working in the field for decades remain digitally invisible - a reality with at times dire implications. In terms of international aid data, “localisation” includes not only shedding light on global (local) partners involved but also supporting  ownership by these organisations and a recognition of their work and the wealth of data that they generate, starting with needs assessments. 

This session will provide an opportunity to dive into the following issues: Ensuring the availability of comprehensive and transparent international aid data and that data collected by local organisations is valued and available; Capturing the right data to support transparency and aligning commitments and reality; Recognizing the benefits for all stakeholders (data users, publishers and partners) of collecting and publishing this data. Through an interactive conversation between speakers and participants co-organized by Fields Data, Bike Scouts and CanWaCH, we hope to: 

  • Raise awareness on the challenges of transparency and the absence of data related to the collaboration with “local” organisations and the fact that local-level information is integral - and even essential - for effective project implementation.
  • Emphasise on the fact that localisation cannot happen without knowledge about the local organisations, and thus advocate for international aid data publishers to go the extra mile in including information about local partners. 
  • Discuss how having local networks ready much before a disaster can aid anticipatory action.

Interested in truly ensuring the availability of comprehensive and transparent international aid data and leveraging publicly available information for strategic data-driven decision-making? This session is for you!

Speakers: Imaeyen Okon (Manager, Data Management and Digital Learning, CanWaCH), Ericka Moerkerken (Senior Advisor, MEAL, CanWaCH), Anand R. Nair (Co-founder & MD, Fields Data), Lou Gepuela (President, Bike Scouts), and David Marchesseault (Evaluation Manager at the Strategic Policy Branch (PFM) from Global Affairs Canada).

Speaker 1       Speaker 2         Speaker 3       p       aq

Imaeyen Okon   Ericka Moerkerken      Anand R. Nair            Lou Gepuela           David Marchesseault

Hosts: CanWaCH / Fields Data / Bike Scouts

Canwach  FieldsDataBike Scouts

Session 3: 'Fireside Chat - 360Giving Data Standard' by 360Giving

Description: 

Join this interactive "Fire Side-session" to learn more about another Open Data Standard. 360Giving is a charity that helps organisations to openly publish grants data and assists people using this data to improve charitable giving.  In this VCE3-session you will be able to learn more about the 360Giving Data Standard, which is an open data-driven, easy to use, and comprehensive Standard. You will also be able to learn more about GrantNav, 360Giving's free search-engine for grants data. It offers an opportunity to learn more about the way other Open Data Standards operate and make their data accessible. The session will start with a Q&A with Marion Galley (Product Manager at 360Giving), diving into the workings of the 360Giving Data Standard focusing on who publishes to this Standard and how the data is curated and used. Marion will then provide a quick demo of GrantNav and open the floor for any further questions by the audience. Want to learn more about 360Giving ahead of the session? Click here

Speakers: Marion Galley (Product Manager, 360Giving) and Rohini Simbodyal (IATI Secretariat / UNDP)

,       Rohini

Marion Galley            Rohini Simbodyal (moderator)

Host: 360Giving

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Sessions Block 2  - 14:30-15:15 (UTC) / 10:30-11:15 (EST). View the complete VCE-agenda here

Session 4: 'Using IATI data to research aid’s big questions: Climate, localisation and women’s economic empowerment' by Publish What You Fund

Description: 

This session will provide an overview of Publish What You Fund’s research into improving the usability of IATI data alongside other aid funding data sources. We will provide an overview of our data collection methodology and how this has been used for research into the below thematic areas:

  • Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) An overview of the data collection methodology used to combine historic IATI & OECD-DAC CRS data along with two other data sources. We will showcase how we dealt with overlaps, removing duplicates and the data cleaning steps PWYF took to prepare data for analysis. Using the outlined approach PWYF has built 6 country data sets to analyse aid spending trends. The session will also outline the strengths and limitations of these data sets and how they have been used to research WEE as well as an update on when findings will be available.
  • Localisation & Climate Finance Building on the data collection methodology applied in the WEE project PWYF has also started investigating Climate Finance and Localisation trends. Although findings are not yet available, the approaches to researching these will be outlined.
  • The session will close with a discussion on the cross-cutting issues. The main aim is to raise awareness of the scale of research PWYF is now doing using IATI data and to share any issues we'd like IATI/the community to help with. Note the aim is not to present on any of the research findings as these are still underway but to showcase our approach to using IATI data and what we have learnt.

Speakers: Gary Forster (CEO-PWYF), Elma Jenkins (Project Officer-PWYF), and Alex Tilley (Head of Research- PWYF)

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Gary Forster      Elma Jenkins                 Alex Tilley             

Hosts: Publish What You Fund

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Session 5: 'Showcasing IATI Tools 1' - by Zimmerman, Open Data Company and Youth Open Data

Description of the Session: this is the first part of the 'Showcasing IATI Tools' sessions. This part will showcase three innovative tools and services offered to the wider IATI Community:

  • Zimmerman: Our tool, currently under development, will be able to convert a IATI datapoint containing all information about an activity into a long but fixed-length representation of it by processing variable-size fields with Deep Sets Prediction Networks models. The use of a subsequent conventional AutoEncoder leads to short length points whose euclidean distances are an indication of their similarity; moreover data reconstruction purposes are achieved by the use of the Decoder. MLOps and data preparation techniques are going to be part of the presentation as well;
  • Open Data Company: The tool we will be showcasing is called the Aid Information Data Analytics (in short AIDA) platform. The AIDA platform enables users to publish, validate their IATI data and visualise the all IATI data in order to make aid data easier to understand and analyse, to enable organisations to fulfil their transparency obligations as well as plan for more effective aid activities.
  • Youth Open Data: Our presentation will focus on the Yeeli application. Yeeli is a citizen information and monitoring application on health and municipal services in public institutions in Burkina Faso.

Speakers: Francesco Stablum (Machine Learning Engineer- Zimmerman), Maaike Blom (CEO of Data4Development- Open Data Company), Marianne Allam (Senior Advisor- Open Data Company), and Charles Bazie (President & Founder of Youth Open Data).

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Francesco Stablum           Maaike Blom         Marianne Allam       ​​​Charles Bazie

Hosts: ZimmermanOpen Data Company (aida), and Youth Open Data

Zimmerman         aida   yod 

Session 6: 'IATI Info Session' by IATI Secretariat

Description:

Want to know more about the International Aid Transparency Initiative and how you can benefit from engaging with us? Then join our VCE3-Special IATI Info Session!

  • The IATI Info Session is an informal meeting open for anyone with an interest in the field of transparency of development and humanitarian resources;
  • Interested in truly ensuring the availability of comprehensive and transparent international aid data and leveraging publicly available information for strategic data-driven decision-making? This session is for you!
  • Ask any of your questions or share your thoughts during the session

Speakers: Rohini Simbodyal (Communications Specialist at IATI Secretariat / UNDP)

Rohini

Rohini Simbodyal

Host:  IATI Secretariat

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Sessions Block 3 - 15:20-16:05 (UTC) / 11:20-12:05 (EST). View the complete VCE-agenda here

Session 7: ‘Promoting gender equality by making financial and programmatic data more visible – challenges and potentials of the gender marker and SDG 5 tag in IATI reporting’ by UN Women and Publish What You Fund

Description:

While enormous progress has been made to make programmes more gender-responsive, there are still gaps in terms of data accessibility and capacity. A wide and consistent utilization of the gender equality marker and SDG 5 tag in IATI reporting is essential to make results more visible and to identify and close funding and programmatic gaps to drive further action towards gender equality. This session by UN Women and Publish What You Fund will explore the following aspects:

  • Gender financing transparency: Publish What You Fund will provide an overview of its 2021 report ‘Making gender financing more transparent’, and reflect on any new insights since its publication on the challenges and opportunities of gender marker harmonization.
  • The gender equality marker as a tool for gender data visibility and as a UN Financial Data standard: UN Women will share lessons learned from implementing the UN-SWAP, the accountability framework for gender mainstreaming in the UN System, and gender marker in specific and show how this can be used by all IATI publishers beyond UN entities to make gender data visible. The gender equality marker was made a standard in 2012 for UN entities reporting to the UN-SWAP and is now being adopted as a new UN financial data standard for reporting to IATI and the OECD, thereby expanding ownership to the budget and finance functions in UN entities and allowing for cross-fertilization with other data analytics regarding financing for gender equality.
  • Analysis and utilization of gender data in practice: UN Women will give practical examples of how IATI data can be analyzed using the gender equality marker as well as SDG 5 tag to examine the gender financing landscape.

Before the closing of the session, we are looking forward to any questions and engaging in discussions!

SpeakersJamie Holton (Senior Project Officer- Publish What You Fund), Priya Alvarez (Coordination Advisor-UN Women), and Navin Haram (Strategic Planning Specialist-UN Women).

Jamie        Navin        Priya

Jamie Holton              Navin Haram                 Priya Alvarez

Hosts: UN Women / Publish What You Fund

UNWomen      PWYF

 

Session 8: 'The World Needs Statistics but Who is Funding What and Where? A Case for the Clearinghouse' by Paris 21 and Open Data Watch

Description: 

This session will cover ongoing developments within the sustainable development community to achieve more and better data on financing flows to statistics. Following up on the launch of the Clearinghouse in 2021 and the related IATI's Virtual Exchange session, it will cover the current challenges surrounding transparent information on aid to statistics before switching to focusing on existing and ongoing solutions to overcome such challenges. One of the solutions that will be highlighted is the Clearinghouse for Financing Development Data. The session will go beyond a mere presentation of the platform and move into discussing current and future plans for updates while collecting first-hand feedback from users and potential users. We will hear from participants on where their pain points are in better understanding who is funding data where and together outline a path forward for how platforms and tools like IATI and the Clearinghouse can overcome them. The main goal of the session is to collect feedback on what additional information is needed to improve the use and usefulness of the Clearinghouse for Financing Development Data.

Speakers: Deirdre Appel (Clearinghouse Community Manager, PARIS21) and Lorenz Noe (Research Manager at Open Data Watch)

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Deirdre Appel              Lorenz Noe

Hosts: Paris 21/ Open Data Watch

Draft Agenda      Draft Agenda

Session 9: ‘Showcasing IATI Tools 2 & Discussion: What’s the Role for Community-led tools in IATI?' – by Young Innovations, Open Data Services

Description: this is the second part of the 'Showcasing IATI Tools'-sessions. This part will showcase two innovative tools and services offered to the wider IATI Community, and end with an interactive Community-Discussion about the Role for Community-led tools in IATI!

  • Young Innovations: In this session we will attempt to initiate a discussion on how AidStream is dealing with consortium activities through Consortium Feature to provide an effective solution for consortiums to publish their activities. AidStream's Consortium Feature increases better tracking of activities published by consortium- lead org and other members of the consortium.
  • Open Data Services: Over the past year, we've independently funded, hosted, and maintained two new tools for the IATI community: d-preview to help people take a view of data before it's published; IATI Tables to support the queries of data analysts. In this session, we'll share the background, motivation, and progress of these projects. From there, we'd relish the opportunity for community members to discuss the role of community-led tools in the initiative, in terms of sustainability, synergy, and engagement.

Speakers: Marina Joshi (Business Analyst- Aid Stream/ Young Innovations) and Steven Flower (Co-founder of Open Data Services)

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     Marina Joshi              Steven Flower

Host: Young Innovations and Open Data Services 

YOD     ODS

Closing (16:10-16:30 UTC/ 12:10 to 12:30 EST )

Description: join us during the brief closure of this third edition of IATI's Virtual Community Exchange! 

Speaker: Thea Schepers (Senior Advisor Open Data/ IATI, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of The Netherlands) 

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Thea Schepers

Host: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

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If you have any questions related to the Virtual Community Exchange 3 feel free to contact IATI Secretariat member Sander Hees at sander.hees@undp.org.