Data Quality Index Consultation

DATA COMPLETENESS

Sub-sections 2.7.1 / 2.7.2 / 2.7.3 Financial


Instructions for submitting your feedback

1. Read through the proposed methodology for this measure and / or download the attached PDF at the bottom of this page; 

2. Share your feedback through the comment box below, consider the guiding questions in your comments and include the question number in your response;


Proposed Measures - 2.7.1 FINANCIAL

Please find below the proposed methodology for this measure. 

DEFINITION Assess if an organisation is publishing incoming funds, outgoing commitments and spend.

OUTPUT

  • Percentage (incoming funds)
  • Percentage (outgoing commitments)
  • Percentage (spend)

 

METHODOLOGY 

  • Count the number of active activities with valid transactions of type 1 (incoming funds) with a non-zero value. Divide by the total number of active activities.
  • Count the number of active activities with valid transactions of type 2 (outgoing commitments) with a non-zero value. Divide by the total number of active activities.
  • Count the number of active activities with valid transactions of type 3 and/or 4 (disbursements and/or expenditure) with a non-zero value. Divide by the total number of active activities.

Valid transactions

  • Value must be of xs:decimal
  • Transaction date iso-date and value-date must be a valid xs:date

Guiding question - please refer to the index number and question number when you respond via the comment box below!

1. Should these assessments only apply to activities with no child activities? This is to indicate that they are at the lowest level of hierarchy?



Proposed Measures - 2.7.2 FINANCIAL

Please find below the proposed methodology for this measure. 

DEFINITION Assess if transactions have a value-date within one month of the transaction.

OUTPUT

  • Percentage

 

METHODOLOGY

For active activities:

  • Count number of transactions that have a value date within one month of the transaction iso-date. Divide by the total number of transactions

 


Guiding question - please refer to the index number and question number when you respond via the comment box below!

2. What time period should be used here to capture 'sensible' transaction value dates?



Proposed Measures - 2.7.3 FINANCIAL

Please find below the proposed methodology for this measure. 

DEFINITION Assess if budgets are provided for the whole activity-period

OUTPUT

  • Percentage

 

METHODOLOGY

  • Store the actual start date and actual end date for each active activity. If not present, store the planned start and planned end date. Calculate the time-span (count of days, as well as their dates) from activity start to activity end.
  • For each valid budget within the activity, calculate the time-span from budget start date to budget end date. Subtract from the count of total activity time-span days from the number of unique days covered by each budget time-span.
  • Calculate the percentage of covered days by counting the number of unique days covered within budget time-spans, and dividing that by the total number of days within the activity time-span.
  • Sum the calculated percentage of covered days for each activity. Divide by the total number of activities.

Valid budgets

  • Budgets must contain a start date, end date and value date with valid xs:dates.
  • Budgets must contain a value that is a valid xs:decimal.

Note

  • Activities marked with @budget-not-provided are to be removed from the assessment.

Guiding question - please refer to the index number and question number when you respond via the comment box below!

3. The current assessment provides a percentage of time covered for each activity, rather than a yes/no output. Are there other options you would suggest for measuring this?

  • Please note, budgets of zero value are valid and can be added to cover periods of time when there is no expected spend on an activity.

GO BACK TO MAIN DQI-PAGE  


Webinar

For each discussion, the IATI Secretariat will organise a webinar to explain the proposed methodology, answer questions and further explain how to engage.

  • Please find an overview of the most frequently asked questions of the Timeliness and Validation webinar here.
  • Missed the DQI Webinar on Data Completeness held on March 30? Watch the recordings here or read the summaryhere!
Files

Comments (9)

Elma Jenkins
Elma Jenkins

We have some general comments on this phase which can be found in the numbered points in the document below :  

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BpEjcypxpHJ_SNCnscy2HZe7otEZZIYcjE7HPFdDPfI/edit?usp=sharing

2.7.1 / 2.7.2 / 2.7.3 Financial 

2.7.1 Incoming funds, outgoing commitments & disbursements  

  • what about top of chain funders who only disburse tranches. Not all publishers have ‘incoming funds’ 

2.7.2 Transaction value date & 2.7.3 Budgets for whole activity period 

  • What about activities which have been delayed? 

 

As well as some indicator specific comments :

 

Amy Silcock
Amy Silcock

Thea Schepers  and Elma Jenkins  

For 2.7.1 incoming funds, there's the option of adding exclusions such as to exclude activities where the 'funder' is the reporting organisation. Would be good to also hear your ideas on this. This is to be picked up in the weights and measure section of the consultation.

 

For 2.7.3 if an activity is delayed, we would expect the budget values to be updated accordingly. In IATI it's possible to report 0 valued budgets to demonstrate time periods where no spend is expected.

Evgenia Tyurina
Evgenia Tyurina

Just a question here from the ILO side: Could you please explain the logic behind the 2.7.2 measure? What aspect of the data quality we are trying to assess by this measure? Thanks a lot!

Amy Silcock
Amy Silcock

Currently, some organisations have the same transaction value date for all transactions it looks to be a default setting of some kind. This causes issues for data users as it complicates the data and they are unsure of what date to use for currency conversion and undermines trust that the transaction has been reported correctly.

This measures aims to highlight if non-sensible transaction value dates are present in an organisation's publishing. There is a question of what is 'sensible' for a transaction value date.

Yohanna  Loucheur
Yohanna Loucheur

2.7.1: bilateral donors will rarely have incoming funds (except e.g. delegated cooperation). Of course they are a minority, so this would be relevant to the vast majority of publishers. However, depending on how these indicators are used - see the very valid questions asked by PWYF colleagues at the link above - this could be a problem. 

2.7.3: not entirely sure what the questions are getting at. Is this to provide more leeway, ie make more activities count as having a budget for the whole period? 

Thea Schepers
Thea Schepers

One general question: why only active activities? Do we not have quality demands on past activities?

 

This particular part of measuring data quality really is a tough one. Number of transactions of a certain type says more about the type of publisher and the position in the chain of activities the publisher is in, than actual data quality.

Instead of incoming funds, incoming commitments are a better measure. They are there from the start of the project (even in the pre implementation phase) and there is usually one. That's not the case for incoming funds for both aspects. But even this only exists if you actually have donors, which of course not all publishers have.

Number of incoming funds is not an indicator of anything. Some have none (see above), some have 10 because the donor pays in small installments, some have one because the project is short or because that is what was agreed. This literally means nothing. 

Outgoing commitments: they may not exist, because there are no implementing partners. Also: why work with commitments here and not on the incoming side?

2.7.2.

Why look at this at all? 

2.7.3.

- There often is an actual start and a *planned* end date. I'd do this in such a way that this measure works for this situation as well. I would say, in fact, that active activities have no actual end date at all yet.

- Does this also check on overlap in time between budgets?

About the questions asked:

1. Only for activities with no child activities? No. You don't know if it's the lowest level activity, only that it is the lowest level activity of *that publisher*. 

 

Amy Silcock
Amy Silcock

Hi Thea Schepers  the proposed measures are assessing what percentage of active activities contain at least one transaction of each type - incoming fund, incoming commitment etc. I agree that counting the number of transactions per type isn't helpful, nor is it a part of the proposed assessment.

The vast majority of IATI activities should have these transactions. There will be some exclusions e.g. top level donors and activities in a hierarchy to be discussed in the weights and measures section. Would be good to hear further thoughts on how to capture these.

 

 

 

Sarah Scholz
Sarah Scholz

Q1.   This approach is acceptable

Q2.   It is our experience that either value date or transaction date are reported, or the both are reported as the same date.  It is very rare to see these reported as different dates.  We are not sure of the utility of these measures.

Q3.   No comment.  I don’t see a reason why budget coverage shouldn’t be assessed as they propose.

Other: Many organizations, like bilateral donors, will almost never report incoming transactions.  If the methodology is going to assess incoming funds across all activities, the percentage reported will only be meaningful if it is known if a publishing organization should be reporting incoming funds.


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