The IATI Accra Statement is IATI’s founding document

Emergentally has supported a range of partner country governments, development partners and civil society organisations to use IATI data over the last two years. This builds on fifteen years of experience with IATI data. We provide some initial suggestions for how to think about a new IATI data use strategy, as part of the next IATI Strategic Plan.

Why should we care about people using IATI data?

In 2008, in Accra, Ghana, IATI was founded with clear ambitions of improving aid effectiveness and strengthening accountability through the provision of better information by development partners. The intention was not only to make information available; there was a clear link to the aid effectiveness commitments of the Accra Agenda for Action, which recognised the central role of partner country governments in development outcomes. The IATI Accra Statement went further in emphasising the right of information being available to both taxpayers and citizens in developing countries, and the role of transparency in promoting mutual accountability.

Today, the world obviously looks very different from 2008 — but transparency is still vitally important. Given the increasing diversity of providers of things that “look like” development cooperation, it’s even harder than before to effectively coordinate, and ensure that resources are spent in line with national development priorities. The pressures that development cooperation budgets are facing, and increasing scrutiny, combine to make it even more important that scarce resources are spent well. IATI therefore has a vital role to play in strengthening both development effectiveness and accountability.

Who is using the data already?

Over the last few years, there has been a big increase in the use of IATI data to address aid effectiveness challenges and to promote accountability. The IATI Data Use Working Group summarised progress on data use back in December 2021. IATI's 2022 Annual Report highlighted significant progress on the use of data by partner country governments, and the 2023 Annual Report cited examples of journalists using the data for accountability, and for tracking investments in food security. We now have quite a lot of information on who is using the data. That progress is down to a lot of hard work from a lot of people. Nevertheless, there is a widespread feeling that IATI is currently falling short of meeting its full potential, and that more people should be using IATI data by this point.

Learning from IATI’s current users

We know from our own experience that IATI data can be very beneficial to users, but it can also be very difficult to use. As a first step, we should talk to IATI’s existing users, and learn from them. How did they use IATI data, and what problems did this help them solve? What barriers did they face in using IATI data? How can we lower those barriers? The answer to these questions could help identify clear, specific activities which would make it easier for the next generation of people that come to use IATI data.

A framework for a new data use strategy

When thinking about how to prioritise further work on data use, it’s tempting to jump straight to the “who”. Everybody has a set of actors that they are most familiar with, and it is understandable that each of us think the stakeholders we are closest to should be a high priority to support in using the data.

But do we really want NGOs, or government officials, or policy-makers to spend time using IATI data — to make visualisations, to do data wrangling, or to increase pageviews on IATI tools? Of course not. We want them to use data in order to solve real-world problems that a) matter to them, and b) are in line with IATI’s mission. ¹

Once we know what we are trying to achieve, we need to think about who will be the actors most relevant for achieving that, and how we need to get data to them. That gives us something like the following three questions:

1. What do we want to achieve (impact > outcomes > outputs)?
2. Who would need to use the data to achieve that (people or organisations)?
3. How do we get the data to those people or organisations (activities)?

The rest of this post will sketch out some answers to these three questions. Different people will have different answers to each of the questions.

1. What do we want to achieve?

We already have answers the first question — what we want to achieve — from the IATI Theory of Change (ToC). According to this document, the overarching impact IATI is working towards is “Sustainable development outcomes achieved”. The ToC lists a number of intermediate results which build from lower-level outcomes to this impact. These could be summarised as the following: ²

1. identify and achieve sustainable national development results;
2. improve planning, implementation and monitoring of development initiatives;
3. enable stakeholders to hold each other accountable;
4. ensure that national policy and decision-making processes are inclusive.

Of course it is legitimate and reasonable to update that document periodically. But that set of higher-level outcomes seem like a good place to start.

2. Who would need to use the data to achieve that?

In order to achieve these outcomes, it is important to engage with different groups of stakeholders at country level. Different stakeholders will have different roles and a different level of influence on achieving each of the four outcomes. Depending on the country context, the most relevant groups for each outcome could be:

1. Ministries of Finance or Planning, Prime Ministers or Presidents’ offices, Development Partner coordination groups, Ministries of Health if there is a significant amount of off-budget flows that need coordinating, Ministries of Environment when there is a significant amount of climate finance. ³
2. Ministries of Finance or Planning
3. NGO platforms and media
4. NGO platforms, Development Partner coordination groups, Ministries of Finance or Planning

My personal perspective is that the use of data by country-level stakeholders will have the most direct impact in achieving all four outcomes. However, the use of data by global-level stakeholders can also have an enabling and sometimes very powerful role on development effectiveness and accountability. ⁴

Which stakeholders should eventually be prioritised? A stakeholder analysis could help identify the groups that have the most a) influence and b) interest in relation to each outcome.

3. How do we get the data to those people or organisations?

In terms of what you would then actually do, there are lots of different options, but we could maybe think about this in two ways:

1. breadth: at the global level, strengthen IATI tools and data so that they are used by each of those user groups for the particular use cases.
   This could mean for example:
   • ensure interfaces and data are available in languages covering X% of developing countries
   • ensure interfaces are generally usable for users contributing to the above outcomes: do users report that they are able to easily retrieve the data they need in the required formats?
   • ensure the quality of data from relevant organisations meets the needs of the use cases: global-level tools won’t be useful if they are missing key data important at country level (whether that’s climate finance, China, Japan, etc.).
2. depth: at the national level, get IATI data closer to stakeholders’ own data, systems and needs:
   • integrate with AIMS, and perhaps also with ministry systems (e.g. health intervention tracking), being mindful of the risk of undermining central government accountability structures
   • perhaps working through AIMS, integrate with national systems set up by (I)NGO umbrella bodies
   • support NGOs at country level in 2-3 countries to understand IATI data in the context of their own priorities (e.g. coordination / accountability / advocacy / fundraising)

These are just a few ideas – and of course, different people will have different answers to these questions. But perhaps we can agree that something like the above sequencing of the questions (what > who > how) would help to build consensus around a shared agenda and shared objectives.

The road to 2030

The IATI community is about to begin discussing the IATI Strategic Plan for 2026-2030, which will take us up to the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. IATI has come a long way since Accra, but there is clearly much more to be done to ensure that data is used to meet IATI's potential. We need to collectively refocus our efforts on ensuring that we are delivering on IATI’s founding purpose: strengthening development effectiveness and accountability. Getting the next Strategic Plan right will help us all in the sprint to the finish line.