Publish What You Fund has launched a new online tool that allows aid and development finance publishers to independently check the quality of their data before they publish it to IATI. The aim of the Data Quality Tester – currently in Beta – is to indicate when information falls short of the specific data quality tests used to assess donors in the Aid Transparency Index. We expect it to be most useful for donors who are included in the Index to monitor their own progress both during and outside of the Index cycle.

Who is the Data Quality Tester for?

The Data Quality Tester is also suitable for organisations who want to start publishing in the IATI Standard and for those that do not qualify for inclusion in the Index, or that used to be assessed but are not currently. The open source online tool is useful because:

• Both the IATI Standard and the Index tests can at times be complex and the tool allows a quick check against them, so donor agency staff can understand any issues
• It allows publishers to internally and independently check the quality of their information before uploading to the IATI Registry, saving time and making sure that when data is uploaded, it is as good as it can be
• It provides publishers with an opportunity to assess their data against the updated Index methodology and recognise where they need to improve

The tool is now live and available to use at:  http://dataqualitytester.publishwhatyoufund.org/.

We invite donors to use the tool and send us any helpful feedback as to how it could be improved. A final version will be released in advance of the data collection period for the next Aid Transparency Index.

Technical consultation now live on Github

In October 2016 we began consultations with peer reviewers and independent partners on the Aid Transparency Index methodology review. This was then opened up to a wider audience via an online form and face to face discussions, between November 2016 and January 2017. We received over 60 submissions and were able to come to a number of conclusions with regards to updating the Index methodology.

Some key areas required further consideration, however, for example how to measure quality and visibility thresholds. We have continued to consult on these areas and will be finalising the updated Index methodology in the next few weeks.

As the final part of this process, we have released an online technical consultation for the data quality tests we run as part of the Aid Transparency Index methodology. These tests are run on all donors who publish to IATI during the Index data collection period and are used to calculate the final scores.

We are specifically asking for feedback on the proposed changes to the data quality tests underpinning the automated assessment of IATI data. The changes reflect the proposed updates to the Index methodology. The Github consultation is technical in nature and suitable for people familiar with XML and IATI. Guidelines on how you can provide feedback are available on the Github homepage (See: ‘Commenting on indicators’). If you aren’t familiar with these formats, you may prefer to read our blog updates on the Index methodology.

The comments and suggestions collected during the technical consultation will be considered by Publish What You Fund and where appropriate incorporated into the final methodology and data collection processes. We may make further minor changes to the Github tests once the outstanding issues on the methodology have been finalised.

Please note that you will need to sign up for a free github account (if you do not already have one) in order to leave comments. The technical consultation will close on 14 April 2017 and is available here: https://github.com/pwyf/2017-technical-consultation.

Please contact tracker@publishwhatyoufund.org if you have any further questions.