A total-budget for an activity?

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Over on this thread we’re discussing the nature of the Commitment transaction, as it may have a couple of use cases

One of these is to express the total budget, as explained here:

The total budget for an activity should be reported as a commitment in the transaction element.

Meanwhile, in the Org standard, we have an element named total-budget:

the organisation’s total annual planned budget for each of the next three years is reported.

When you read this, it’s not quite one expression for a total budget, as advice is to represent different years - it seems more like an “annual-budget”, perhaps.

Around the community of IATI publishers - particularly non-donors - I’ve observed some confusion around the concept of budgets, and total budgets (via transaction commitments). Given that the standard doesn’t explicitly provide a total-budget for an activity, do people see this as an issue? Is a new total-budget element an answer, or just clearer guidance?

Most importantly, do people need to see/use total budget data for activities?

Any thoughts welcome!

Comments (6)

Wendy Rogers • 7 years ago

Thanks for raising Steven Flower and I think there is a similar discussion via the ‘Total Cost of the Award’ thread? Would it be useful to merge the two topics?

Steven Flower • 7 years ago

Great, thanks for spotting that Wendy Rogers

Yes - it makes sense to link the topics, although I note that the last activity on was back in April: Total Cost of the Award - New Field Suggestion

Moving forward, is this something we need to discuss at the TAG?

Andie Vaughn • 7 years ago

Hi Wendy and Steven,

I’d brought up the Total Cost of the Award issue several months ago on that thread, and I know this is something we are still interested in publishing and discussing.

Thanks!

Wendy Rogers • 7 years ago

Thanks Andie Vaughn and Steven Flower and just to confirm that this topic is on the list for the TAG see here

Yohanna Loucheur • 7 years ago

For us as a bilateral donor, the notion that the total budget is captured as a transaction-commitment is clear and fairly easy to implement. However I can see how it could be confusing, or not reflect the reality in other situations. There are cases where the commitment will NOT be the total budget, if they are several donors for instance. Perhaps it would be a useful discussion to have.

Wendy Rogers • 7 years ago

Thanks all for your comments on this and just to let you know that I have now moved the related topic ’ Total Cost Of The Award - new field’ into the ‘Standard Management -> Modifications, Additions, Improvements’ category so that any candidate enhancements to the IATI Standard can be considered for the new Std upgrade. Therefore I’ll close this topic now so that all related discussions can be added to the other post.

Many thanks

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