Depending on your licence, you can add up to 5 users to jointly work on your organisation's account in AIDA. To invite team members, go to My Account - Organisation. Users can either have an Admin or a Member role

Publisher IDs are unique codes assigned to each organisation that is registered on the IATI registry. The Publisher ID is commonly an abbreviation of the name of the organisation. It is also included in the URL for the organisation's publisher page.

1. If you are already registered as a publisher, log in on the registry to find your ID.

2. If you are not yet registered, click here.

3. Link to additional instructions.

On AIDA, follow the steps under Profile Settings > Registry Information:

1. Enter your publisher ID.

2. Click save and your IATI organisation ID will appear

How to register with IATI

The IATI Registry issues an API token, which is a one-of-a-kind code. It differs from one organisation to another. Your API token can be found under the "My Account" page in your IATI Registry account.

1. Go to My Account.

2. Click on API Tokens

3. Type your organisation’s name in the ‘Name’ text box.

4. Click on the “Create API Token button”

5. You will get a pop-up at the top of the page after the token is created.

6. Click on the “copy” icon.

On AIDA, follow the steps under Profile Settings > Registry Information:

1. Paste the token in the Publishing Settings page on AIDA.

2. Click on the “Save” button to save the information.

NB: Once the API Token is issued you can view it only once. Therefore, also copy your API token to a document/location that can be accessed by the other members of your organisation involved in the IATI process, in case it is needed later.

The activity data file contains the data of the IATI activity(ies) that your organisation is publishing according to the IATI Standard. This is the basis of your publication. For a definition of an IATI Activity, see here.

The organisation file contains data about your organisation as a whole, such as the total budget, expenditures, and relevant documents such as the Annual Report. This can provide further context and transparency about your work in relation to your published activities.

It also allows publishers to report on information for multiple organisations.E.g: a government agency may report on behalf of other agencies; an INGO may report on behalf of its national associates; a private company may report on behalf of its subsidiaries.

NB: The publication of the organisation file is not mandatory.

You create a new activity by creating an ID and entering the required information for that activity into the spreadsheets.

An activity identifier is composed of your IATI organisation identifier plus an extension code that you are free to create. We suggest that the extension code is built in a way that is easily recognisable by members of your organisation.

Example: Your IATI organisation ID is NL-KVK-12345. Your IATI activity is a project about COVID in 2022, then your activity ID will be: NL-KVK-12345-COVID22

Check out our instructions for creating and maintaining IATI activities.

Check out our instructions for how to use the spreadsheets from the AIDA Data Services for publishing.

You close your activity by changing the Project Status.

Check out our instructions for creating and maintaining IATI activities.

To publishing your IATI data with AIDA, please follow the steps:

1. Start your publication process: Follow an internal deadline and produce your data

2. Fill/update data in the Spreadsheet Templates

3. Upload/update your templates in AIDA:

   • Go to the bulk management tab of your AIDA account.

   • Upload your sheets: For a new set, click [+], if you are updating a previous publication, go to the bulk management tab and select ‘ Edit’ on the line of the dataset. You can then follow the same steps).

   • Press ´Next´

   • Click ´Done´

4. Correct errors

   • If your dataset is valid, you can still correct any remaining errors/warnings if existing.

   • If your dataset in invalid, check out the validation report, correct your sheets and re-upload them.

5. Publish your dataset(s)

   • Change the status from 'Draft' to 'Published', or select 'Publish Instead'

6. Check your data

   • Wait 24h before your data is online on the different IATI platforms.

Also see:

Quick Reference Card - Publication steps

How to use the AIDA Data Services for publishing

No. You may choose to spit up your IATI publication into multiple datasets (e.g. to make it easier to manage if you have a large amount of activities or if you have a historical dataset that will no longer be updated). However when you update your dataset, for example for your quarterly publication deadline, you do not add a New dataset but rather Edit the one you published previously.

Please check your file size. In case individual files are larger than 200KB it may take longer than usual to convert. If the conversion does not take place at all, please contact us for support.

You will remain the owner of your publications at all times. The AIDA Platform will only help you visualise the data in your publication.

The IATI Validator is an online tool for checking if data complies with the rules and guidance of IATI Standard. The tool provides information on how to improve the quality of IATI data to ensure it is accessible and useful to anyone working with data on development and humanitarian resources and results. The Validator undertakes multiple layers of checks to identify where the data does not comply with the IATI Standard. The Validator will then provide validation reports to indicate where errors have occurred and what specifically needs to be changed. 

The AIDA File validation report provides an overview of the data quality feedback per converted data file. The report is based on the official IATI Validator, which was created by Data4Development for the IATI Secretariat.

When the IATI Validator identifies invalid data, it returns a message to the user. Based on the issue the Validator has identified, the user will either receive a critical, error or a warning message identifying what the invalid data is and where it occurs in the data file, and provide actionable/directive messages on how to fix it. If there are multiple repeated errors, they will be grouped as the same fix applies to all. For instance, if all activities in a dataset omitted the activity dates, then the user would receive one error message that applies to all activities.

If a file is flagged with a Critical, Error, or Warning status it means that there are errors to fix. In order of priority (highest to lowest): 

• Critical - data cannot be used by tools (severe error making it impossible to convert the data into a complete IATI file);

• Error - data is hard or impossible to use (follows the IATI standard mandatory rules);

• Warning - data can be more valuable and warnings should be corrected when possible (follows the IATI standard recommended rules);

1. Once your dataset has been converted on AIDA, you first get feedback on the platform, either ´Valid´ or ´Invalid´.

• If your dataset is valid, then your converted file follows the requirement of the IATI Standard. Your dataset can be published. It is possible that there are warnings or suggestions for improvement so you can still view the validation report to check this.

• If your dataset is invalid, you cannot publish in IATI as your dataset has critical errors. Please review the validation report, and identify your errors.
  
  

2. Once you have reviewed the validation report, correct your data in your spreadsheet (in your own organisation environment) and re-upload and -convert all the spreadsheets (also those that did not need correction). 

3. If you now get a ´Valid´ status then you can publish your file.

We realise that using the File validation report can be a bit difficult at first, and sometimes the errors are quite technical. We have compiled a list of frequent errors and solutions for you to look at. However, if you need personal guidance to fix your data, let us know!

Video: How to fix the errors in my dataset and fix it

Click here for a list of frequent Critical errors and how to solve them.

Click here for a list of frequent Error & Warning and how to solve them.

How likely is it that my file will have errors or invalid data?

This may occur frequently depending on the level of your data quality. As you publish more often and improve your source data, the errors will happen less often. To prevent errors as much as possible, it is always good to do a quality check beforehand to ensure all mandatory fields are filled, there are no accidental formatting issues (e.g. on dates or amounts) and each activity is included in all sheets that you are uploading. A list of frequent errors and how to resolve them can be found here.

No. Different donors have their own specific set of data requirements for their grantees that are additional to IATI’s rules. You need to refer to the guidelines you received from your donor to check what else is needed. If you need personalised guidance, let us know!

See this guidance document.

At the minimum, you will need to ensure that your files are valid, otherwise they cannot be published. However, there are also additional levels of data quality that you can aspire to. This is up to your organisation to decide what you want to improve and what is possible. If you need guidance, let us know!

The levels of data quality can range from a quick publication with minimal effort to full publication suitable for external reports and data tools. The different levels of quality in order are: 

1. MINIMUM REQUIREMENT: Data can be published by the converter (file is valid) but will still result in errors & warnings when publishing;

2. Data is complete with no errors but some warnings;

3. Data is complete with no errors and no warnings;

You can use the file validation report to check which level your data is at and improve it if needed.

Additionally you can also aspire to two other levels of data quality. These are not part of the Data Validator but can be part of your internal quality checks before uploading:

• Data is in line with donor guidelines (all mandatory information required by the donor is included);

• Data is comprehensive: additional data quality has been added to increase transparency, including non-essential information (i.e. background information, disaggregated data, baseline & targets narratives, etc.) and can be used for additional purposes.

Note: Publishing in IATI should be a cycle of continuous improvement: Produce, Use & Improve. Keep in mind that IATI is an open data source and any information published is freely available online. Take care that your data meets the communication standards of your organisation (e.g. similar to data published on your website) and does not include any confidential information.

Defaults are prefilled for convenience but you can also decide for yourself (they are mandatory fields).

Levels:

Some information can either be provided on the activity level or the transaction/result level:

• collaboration type is only for the whole activity, just like policy markers

• flow-type, finance-type, aid-type, tied-status can also be provided on the transaction level (will override the

• sectors and recipient-countries/regions you can do OR for the activity, OR for every transaction

• location can be for the whole activity and then reused to differentiate varying locations between indicators

Frequency:

collaboration type, flow type, finance type & tied status: only use one

for aid type, technically it is allowed to provide more than one value (mostly in case of using multiple vocabularies but could technically also be more than 1 of the same vocabulary)

in case of sectors and countries/regions you need to add a budget percentage if you have more than 1.

Situation: We're using a new project management system, and we only have recent/currently running projects in there. Do we need to continue publishing our previous activities as well?

It depends

The short answer is that IATI's main purpose is to share forward-looking, comprehensive and timely information. So that would be "no".  However, generally speaking the approach from IATI is that everything you have ever published you will have to continue to publish.

We recommend to continue publishing closed activities: 

a) If you have funded partner organisations that are publishing IATI data that refers to your projects (for instance via incoming transactions), it would be better to keep publishing them.

b) If you want to show your past performance or use IATI for your website or a joint dashboard, it may also be beneficial to keep publishing them.

Optional: Creating an archived dataset in AIDA:

If you have a large number of closed activities, it is also possible to separate these from your ongoing activities by moving them to a separate set of the spreadsheet templates and publishing them as a new dataset. In this way the 'closed dataset' can stay as is and you only need to update and review your ongoing activities, making it easier to keep the data clean. 

Yes, it is possible to anonymize the names of partner organizations. The naming convention is flexible and up to the organization. You can chose 'partner 1', 'local partner a' etc.. The partners must however be traceable on the organization's end. So we would strongly advise to keep a map or overview of the different partner organizations linked to the anonymous names. In addition, please make sure to use the same partner names in the transactions sheet, to ensure that these can be linked and traced. If you need more support, contact us.

For funding recipients of the Dutch Ministry, it is important that you appear on the METIS dashboard. In order to do so, you need to at minimum have included the Incoming Commitment transaction type for your (parent) activity. 

If you are not appearing or have questions about the dashboard, contact the MoFA helpdesk: HELPDESK-OPENDATA@minbuza.nl 

• Instructions for searching METIS