Question to the group, should we think about renaming some of the default and older IATI Codelists to be more specific? Over time more vocabularies have been added e.g. UN region codelist. This can can cause confusion as the original OECD DAC region codelist is just called 'region':
(See this here: https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Codelists-NonEmbedded/blob/master/xml/Regi…)
We could change this to Region - OECD DAC, and Region - UN or similar.
To me, if we were to do this aligning it with an upgrade would be sensible.
Reasoning for the change:
- In various IATI search tools (datastore search/d-portal/datastore classic/iati.cloud) have drop down boxes for searching sectors/regions/policy markers etc. But no or little indication of which vocabulary is being used. If we were to get to a point where multiple vocabularies could be searched on, it would be helpful to have useful names in the xml codelists to display.
Hi Amy, the proposal sounds sensible, indeed.
I'm in two minds on this. I agree it could be useful to clarify things. However, I sort of think there is some logic to making clear that one set of codelists is the default, because it makes a big difference to the usability of the data. While you can use UN M49 Regions, they don't perfectly line up with DAC Regions. For example:
- Turkey: Europe according to the DAC; Western Asia according to UN M49
- Sudan: Eastern Africa according to the DAC; Northern Africa according to UN M49
I think adding the source in parentheses would maybe suggest that the DAC and UN M49 codelists are equal; but they are not - the DAC codelist is preferable, because it is the dominant codelist and we should encourage use of it to allow for comparability of data. 453 publishers are using the DAC region codes; only 17 are using the UN M49 codes:
https://analytics.codeforiati.org/codelist/2/recipient-region_@vocabula…
On the Code for IATI Codelists site, we have captured the UN M49 codelists, and now have two codelists:
- Region [which is the DAC region]
- Region (UN M49)
https://codelists.codeforiati.org/RegionM49/
Just reflecting on it again, I think it would be good to collect some other improvements that could be made to codelists, especially those that don't require an integer upgrade. E.g.:
- add a brief description for each codelist in the metadata (these are currently missing for most codelists)
- add in missing descriptions for embedded codelists, e.g. here: https://codelists.codeforiati.org/OrganisationType/
- translate untranslated codelist text into French (+ think about which other languages we should translate into, if any, and agree a process for keeping translations up to date)
- agree how frequently replicated codelists should be updated and how this should be done. It looks like this is done pretty routinely with DAC codelists, and with the lists of countries and currencies, but less consistently for other codelists. Maybe the Code for IATI Codelists site could be a useful approach to follow -- it has scrapers set up to make it super easy to to incorporate changes to codelists. For example, this codelist was automatically updated today to keep in sync with changes to the list of registration agencies on org-id.guide:
https://codelists.codeforiati.org/OrganisationRegistrationAgency/
Mark Brough it has been a while since I did my compare and contrast so the OECD region list may have changed but the challenge I had with the DAC region code list is that it doesn't contain all countries in the mapping. If it had ALL countries mapped to regions we could have used it but as we operate in countries not on that list it wasn't usable and thus we us the UN(M49) list.
And I do think a review of the names is a good exercise.
I was looking at the UN CEB code list referenced and ultimately it wasn't a link to a code list but to the PDF of instructions and the codes used in the document aren't in line with the actual codes used. by CEB.
If we could get the CEB to produce the codelist in a better format that would be great!
Michelle Levesque I just rediscovered that I made a mapping of countries against the OECD region codelist (10 years ago!):
https://github.com/okfn/iatitools/blob/master/mapping/ISO-DAC-Countries…
It's not complete for all countries, but I think it would be fairly straightforward to map the remainder. I guess the OECD might not want to do this explicitly, as it only captures countries that are ODA-eligible. But perhaps we could ask them to complete the list, or alternatively make an unofficial one ourselves? We could then add this to the Code for IATI Codelists site.
NB this document from the OECD mapping countries against UN M49 regions might also be relevant:
https://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=D…
Mark Brough the comparison of OECD to UN(M49) is quite useful. Thank you for sharing. I don't have a clear or strong opinion on which organization should take the lead on harmonizing these things. I just know it would be nice to have but I'm not holding my breath.
Amy Silcock - I wish you the best of luck getting CEB to update their guidance to include the real codes or at least provide a link to the more granular instructions which have the real codes. They do exist as I've seen them sent to my colleagues who manage our CEB reporting but they don't appear on any public website from what I can tell.
The recent CEB workshop mentioned a mapping between the OECD and UN regions, as well as between the GEM marker and OECD gender policy marker which would be great to see public Henriette Keijzers
Commenting from the CEB Secretariat side: we already started exchanging with OECD-DAC on a more granular mapping of the country / region codes between DAC list and M49, so that differences can be clearly communicated in next year's version of the UN data standards. Above document link is useful.
Also, would be useful Michelle if we you could explain what you mean with getting 'the real codes' on a public website. Thus, we can take this into account in the plan for the next phase of improvements.
Hi Henriette Keijzers ! Opening back up this discussion and wondering if you might be able to update us on whether this was incorporated in the new version of the UN data standards?
Hi Sarah, Yes this was included in the 2023 version of the UN data standards. CEB Secretariat published for the first time an Excel with Code lists for UN system-wide reporting. This includes a crosswalk between the M49, list of ODA recipient countries and UN programme countries. See https://unsceb.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/Code%20lists%20for%20UN%…
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