Discussion

About the Agriculture category

Rory Scott
Rory Scott • 18 February 2016

IATI Agriculture Working Group

The IATI Agriculture Working Group is a sub-group of the IATI Technical Advisory Group (TAG). The goal of the working group is to make the IATI Standard more relevant and useful for agricultural investment decision-making.

Objectives:

The objectives of the IATI Agriculture Working Group are to:

  1. Assess the usability of the existing IATI Standard for the agriculture sector and identify any gaps or areas for development
  2. Propose extensions or additions to the IATI Standard, as necessary and through the upgrade process, so that it meets the needs of those working in the agriculture sector
  3. Validate the relevance and quality of any new agriculture-specific codes or fields to ensure their utility
  4. Promote adoption of and compliance with any new aspects of the IATI Standard that are developed for the agriculture sector
  5. Increase organisations’ capacity to collect and publish data according to the Standard, including through technical assistance and peer learning
  6. Encourage and inform the development of tools for managing, publishing, and/or visualising agricultural investment data

Membership

The IATI Agriculture Working Group is open to any individual or organisation interested in making the IATI Standard more relevant and useful for agricultural investment decision-making. We welcome those with knowledge and expertise in the areas of: the delivery of funding for food security and agriculture, data management, and data standards development. Members are expected to share their knowledge, skills, tools, etc. to contribute to the group’s objectives. Those working for organisations that provide funding for food security and agriculture are also expected to promote adoption of IATI by their organisation.

Governance

The working group was established in January 2016 by a group of organisations working to improve standards for sharing agricultural investment data. Those organisations are: Development Gateway, Foundation Center, InterAction, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Publish What You Fund.

InterAction and the Foundation Center currently lead the working group. The working group will operate until the members of the group decide that there is no longer a need for the group to exist.

Meetings and Logistics

The working group will meet on an as-needed basis, both virtually and in-person, and including at the annual IATI TAG meeting.

Comments (3)

Tim Davies
Tim Davies

Great to see this Working Group getting started.

The team at Open Data Services are looking forward to contributing to this process over the coming months.

Steven Flower and I are currently working on an initial piece of Landscape Analysis for the related Open Ag Funding project: mapping out current IATI and non-IATI sources of data, and identifying the kinds of ways data is being captured and classified.

As part of that, we’re keen to talk to anyone who has a focus on collecting agriculture and nutrition related data, either as part of their IATI data, or via other data collection efforts. Who should be on our interview list?

There’s also a survey up here to capture wider inputs - and we’d value any help in circulating that widely to different data holders and users. The survey is open until 14th March.

David Duffeck
David Duffeck

Supply and demand: improving the open ag funding data landscape

On May 24, 11:00 am – 12:45 pm EDT, Open Data Services will host a webinar with the Initiative for Open Ag Funding to discuss their recently published report on the current landscape of data on agricultural investments.

In the first part of this webinar (11:00 am – 12:00 pm), Open Data Services will present the findings from their analysis. Other Open Ag Funding partners will also share what we’re learning about user data needs. The second part of the webinar (12:00 pm - 12:45 pm) will be a facilitated discussion focused on how this initiative can improve the current data landscape via standards, tools and support. Register for the webinar here.


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