The European Commission are looking to streamline their IATI publishing under one account. This will allow the European Commission to communicate with one voice, help external users receive a complete overview of the European Commission’s support to a sector, country or region.

Specifically joint reporting to IATI would allow for:

  • Aligned communication and preventing fragmentation between services. Current challenges can for example be seen in the Aid Transparency Index, where each Commission service is assessed separately on its transparency.
  • Completeness of information for external users: Joint reporting would allow external users, including the European Commission’s implementing partners as well as their beneficiaries, to improve the overview of the European Commission’s support to a sector, country or region. Partner countries might benefit from EU financial assistance from different instruments managed by different publishing EC services, which are visualised separately in the current state of publication.
  • Opportunity to streamline reporting rules: Currently reporting of humanitarian data and cooperation data follows different reporting rules (how to report, what to report) reflecting the difference between humanitarian assistance, cooperation as well as neighbourhood policy. Joint reporting creates an opportunity to engage in a dialogue on reporting methodology and enhance streamlining where possible

As a first step the accounts INTPA, FPI, NEAR will be merged in September 2022. Followed by ECHO later in the year.

We propose that a new IATI Organisation Identifier should be created for a joint European Commission account.

Code: XI-IATI-EC_GLOBAL

Name: European Commission

Description: European Commission’s external support for international partnerships, humanitarian aid, foreign policy and neighbourhood and enlargement programmes as implemented by the European Commission’s:

  • Directorate-General European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO)
  • Directorate-General International Partnerships (DG INTPA)
  • Directorate-General Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR)
  • Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI)

URL:  https://ec.europa.eu/info/index_en

If no objection is received this XI-IATI code will be approved and added on 1 April 2022.

Comments (8)

Evgenia Tyurina
Evgenia Tyurina

Should the publishers start publishing new provider_org_ref XI-IATI-EC_GLOBAL for funds received from INTPA, FPI, NEAR, ECHO or should we continue using the old org IDs (XI-IATI-EC_ECHO, XI-IATI-EC_INTPA, XI-IATI-EC_NEAR, XI-IATI-EC_FPI) until September 2022? 

When do you plan to reflect the change in the IATI Registry? 

Thank you in advance for clarification!

Audrey Migot-Adholla
Audrey Migot-Adholla

Hi Evgenia,

You don't need to change anything yet, until this proposal has actually been approved you can continue as you have been publishing so far. 

We will update this page again to show that it has been approved once we have reached an agreement on which code is best.

Thanks,

Audrey

Mark Brough
Mark Brough

I can understand the motivation to have all reporting coming from a single place, and to present an integrated picture of all the EU's activities, but I think this could be a bit problematic. As someone who has just been piloting importing International Partnerships' data in Liberia (seemingly successfully!), I would encourage a rethink of this proposal and would like to flag a few immediate concerns:

  1. For ECHO in particular, it's important that data is published as rapidly as possible, so that the data can be as useful as possible at the onset of an emergency. I hope that integrating all organisations through a single publishing process does not create any bottlenecks or lead to any delay in data becoming available.
  2. It's really important to identify data coming from International Partnerships vs ECHO, etc. These instruments are managed quite differently and at the country level, it's important to be able to know where the funds are coming from. I think the Reporting Organisation is the simplest way of identifying the difference in source of funds, but would be great to hear if an alternative is being proposed. If you want to be able to see all funding from e.g. the EU together, users can choose to add it together if they want to. For example, users could also choose to add funding from EU member states if they wanted to show everything from "Team Europe". But they can also choose to see funding from the Netherlands, Germany etc. if they want to.
  3. If you did want to proceed with a single reporting organisation, then instead of making a new XI-IATI code for this, would it not make more sense to use the code for the EU institutions from the DAC? Which I guess would be XM-DAC-918?
  4. If you wanted to go for something beginning with XI-IATI, then given the importance of (2), and the long-established requirement not to change an IATI Identifier for an activity once it's been published, I would suggest making the reporting organisation account simply XI-IATI-EC, and then retaining the existing format of codes (e.g. an International Partnerships activity would continue to be XI-IATI-EC_INTPA-2022/431-370 before and after this change).

Again, I think there are potentially quite significant issues with this approach. I think if there are concerns around having a disaggregated assessment in the Aid Transparency Index then that should be discussed with Publish What You Fund rather than making it harder for users to disaggregate funding by institution / service.

Audrey Migot-Adholla
Audrey Migot-Adholla

Thank you for these perspectives Mark - we will discuss internally and also with the relevant contacts at the EC and post an update here once we have one.

Thanks,

Audrey

Jennifer Müller-Borchert
Jennifer Müller-Borchert

Dear all,
Thank you very much for your comments. Our expert has looked into this and provides the following clarifications.

Q: Should the references to XI-IATI-EC_ECHO, XI-IATI-EC_INTPA, XI-IATI-EC_NEAR, XI-IATI-EC_FPI also be changed to XI-IATI-EC_GLOBAL? If yes, as of when?

A: Not before the implementation of the new ID (1/9/2022), there will be a transition period and we advocate for maintaining of the old IDs for reference.


Q: Is there an impact on XI-IATI-EC_ECHO and the frequency of publication?

A: No, only XI-IATI-EC_INTPA, XI-IATI-EC_NEAR, XI-IATI-EC_FPI activities will be merged into the new XI-IATI-EC_GLOBAL, XI-IATI-EC_ECHO at a later stage, not before being able to publish at daily frequency.

 

Q: Will the granularity of the activities be lost by using a single ID?

A: No, different entities will be visible via the Organisation Role element.

Example: Funding-> XI-IATI-EC_GLOBAL, Accountable-> XI-IATI-EC_INTPA, Extending-> XI-IATI-EC_INTPA, Implementing-> Implementing Partner/ XI-IATI-EC_INTPA

Moreover, in order to find back the initial organisation ID, we can use other-identifier/@ref= XI-IATI-EC_INTPA and other-identifier/@type= B1(Previous Reporting Organisation Identifier).

 

Q: Would XM-DAC-918 or XI-IATI-EC be a better option than XI-IATI-EC_GLOBAL?

A: Maybe XI-IATI-EC, but not XM-DAC-918.

Evgenia Tyurina
Evgenia Tyurina

Hello Audrey Migot-Adholla  , 

Quick question: are the development flows of DG Environment covered in EU data publication in IATI ? If so, by which of the currently existing EU publishers (XI-IATI-EC_ECHO, XI-IATI-EC_INTPA, XI-IATI-EC_NEAR, XI-IATI-EC_FPI) they would be covered ? Is the European Commission still looking to streamline its IATI publishing under one account ? 

Thanks a lot!

Evgenia

IATI Secretariat
IATI Secretariat

Thanks Evgenia for your question. As Audrey no longer works for the Tech Team, hopefully Wendy Thomas  can provide you with a reply. 

Wendy  Thomas
Wendy Thomas

Dear Evgenia, thanks for your question. I am tagging Jennifer Müller-Borchert  to see if she could provide an update on this proposal and clarification re the development flows of DG Environment!

Kind regards, Wendy


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