IATI Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya

Emergentally supported the IATI Secretariat’s IATI Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. We learned from participants about their need for data on development and humanitarian activities, and their experience with IATI tools and data.

In 2008, IATI was founded with the intention of solving development effectiveness challenges and improving accountability. Since then, the initiative has grown from a data standard, to data published by over 1,700 organisations. In the last few years, we have begun to see some real success stories in using the data to address IATI's founding purpose.

Last week, Mark, Muthoni and Xarri from Emergentally supported the IATI Secretariat to facilitate a workshop, bringing together around 50 government officials, civil society organisations and publishers from across Africa. The workshop had four objectives:

1. raise awareness of IATI
2. support participants to use the data
3. gain feedback on challenges with IATI data and tools
4. collect inputs for IATI’s next 5-year Strategic Plan.

We shared the background to IATI with participants, and provided practical training to use IATI’s freely-available tools. However, we also spent a lot of time learning from participants about their demand and need for data on development and humanitarian activities, collecting and then prioritising dozens of real-world use cases.

We learned from participants about their demand for data. Civil society organisations were most interested in budget tracking to ensure transparency to local communities. Government colleagues were most interested in alignment with local, national, and long-term strategic development plans.

Finally, we heard some clear demands for more and better data. 38% of participants said that data needs to be provided at least monthly to be at all userful. We also learned about some of the challenges with using various IATI tools.