During the recent Grand Bargain Transparency Stream workshop, someone (apologies that I don't remember who to give credit to) pointed out how the Organisation Type code list https://iatistandard.org/en/iati-standard/203/codelists/organisationtyp… is biased towards international actors. As far as I can tell, there are only two org-type codes that we can say for certain are local/national actors in a partner country:
24: Partner Country based NGO
72: Private Sector in Aid Recipient Country
These codes all seem ambiguous about whether they identifier local/national or international actors:
10: Government
11: Local Government ("local" here means "sub-national")
15: Other Public Sector
22: National NGO (unfortunately, some NGOs in donor countries use this)
23: Regional NGO (ditto)
30: Public Private Partnership
60: Foundation
70: Private Sector
80: Academic, Training and Research
90: Other
I'm assuming by default that the rest are international, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone else working on GB topics (especially transparency and localisation) about what assumptions you're making.
Cheers, David
Hi David, wasn't it Anna Petruccelli from Action Aid that made the remark..
Oxfam Novib tries to use org type '24' consistently for (partner country based) real national NGOs.
My understanding is that 10, 11 and 15 are also implicitly meant to be based in a reciient country.
rest can be based anywhere isn't..
Leo
Thanks, Leo. Yes, I've noticed that Oxfam Novib does a good job of that in the Somalia data (and also credits its local partners, which sadly, isn't consistent across IATI publishing). I'll do more looking, but I'm pretty sure I've seen 10, at least, used fairly often for donor countries.
Dear David, Sorry for chipping in rather late on this topic. In my view, the issue can be tackled by combining the org identifier (starting with a country code) with the organisation type. An analysis done that way should immediately reveal the international NGO versus the local NGOs, the international active agents versus the local active agents. Just a thought........
Thanks, Maaike. Unfortunately, local orgs are often mentioned as implementing partners by the reporting org, without an IATI org ID, but this approach can still help in some cases.
Hi David, sorry I'm really really late to the party and not sure this is still useful! Yes, I brought this up during the GB meeting (well remembered Leo!). We make similar assumptions on the org types you have listed. In our training we clarify that local implementing partners should be identified by using org type 24 - for localisation/GB purposes - but each country publishes autonomously so this isn't always translated into practice as Partner Country Based NGO is only meaningful from a donor country-centric perspective. In my opinion it is also quite inconsistent with the rest of the org types (except 72 and 73) and, for example, if the local implementing partner is a Foundation or a Research Centre, what org type should they use?
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