IATI networks: thinking beyond traceability

Hi everyone

As part of the traceability discussions, I suggested I would draft some words to help introduce the topic

Here's the document I've drafted. Thanks already to several community members who have read this and provided comments and suggestions.

In short, I propose we should now start to stop talking specifically about traceability. It seems a too narrow and technical concept to help us achieve what we want: networked data.

It seems beneficial to talk more directly about how our ambition is to connect IATI activities, so that we can discover data networks. In turn, these networks can help us see the broader picture of relationships, collaborations and constellations that make up the aid and humanitarian world. Using IATI activities as our building blocks can really help achieve this.

Traceability, as a specific term, seems limited. Tracing funds might be one thing we want to do when we have activities networked, but it is not our sole ambition. I therefore think we need to quietly retire traceability as an concept, and align with the IATI Strategic Plan, which states:

Development and humanitarian interventions are increasingly linked in more and more complex ways, and providing development support most effectively requires a shift from an individual to a more networked approach.

I hope these words can help community members see and discuss the potential the standard has and already illustrates for this network. It's an open document, and comments are extremely welcome (both here and in the document itself).

The core question is: do people align with the ambition of networking data?

Comments (3)

Siem Vaessen • 2 years ago

Any reason to not use Linked-data-default item for this? It's part of the standard and ties into the concept of discovery:

Linked-data-default
"If a publisher chooses to publish linked data about their IATI activities then allowing them to declare where this data is published would support discovery of it, and any additional information they may choose to publish as Linked Data alongside it. "

I don't think networking-data has been classified (yet) in the standard itself.

Reference: https://iatistandard.org/en/iati-standard/203/activity-standard/summary…

Steven Flower • 2 years ago

Hi Siem Vaessen - thanks

My understanding of the linked-data-default element is that *isn't* about linking to other IATI activities that are already published, but about providing URLs to the *same* data, but in Linked Open Data formats (such as RDF).

I don't think there's been any real traction on this since it was added to the standard many years ago - and I agree with you it's very confusing language. But, from a technical perspective (and by all means correct me if I have missed something) this isn't a specific mechanism in the schema to connect up disparate activities....

Amy Silcock • 2 years ago

Hi Siem Vaessen , my understanding is the same as Steven's. That 'linked-data' is for related data not published to IATI. There's also a proposal to deprecate it come v3 (still up for discussion).

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