The IATI Explorer uses the browser-based Exhibit tool to provide a view onto International Aid Transparency Initiative data from the range of donor agencies publishing using the IATI Standard.
The explorer allows you to select a sub-set of IATI data to load up in your browser where you can then further filter and browse the data with a faceted browsing interface. You can view a full profile of each project, and explore data in timeline, tabular and map forms. This is an experimental tool, and due to differences in the data available from different donors, and the different ways donors may represent their data at present, there are a number of issues that may affect the presentation of data and the functioning of this app. This tool requires a modern web browser (Firefox; Chrome or Internet Explorer 7 and above) and makes extensive use of Javascript. Alternative access to IATI Data is linked below.
The Explorer uses a browser-based interface to let you interactively explore small sets of IATI data, and to grab the data you want to export.
It is an ideal tool for finding out what IATI data contains. After choosing the activities you want to explore, you can further filter this set by sector, funder, location and other values, with the updates instantly displayed for you. You can also view a full profile for each individual activity.
This interface works in modern web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE7+). As it loads data directly into your web browser, for large sets of activities loading can take some time.
The Explorer also provides direct access to slices through IATI data for programmers. The Explorer caches copies of all IATI files in it's document store for the convenience of third-party data users and makes it possible to fetch back activity records from across different original data files. For uses that rely on having the very latest data, you may wish to go direct to donor files on the IATI Registry.
The Explorer can convert data into a number of formats, providing it back as XML, JSON and CSV (coming soon).
Two access methods are supported: A RESTful API and An xpath endpoint. More details in our How to Use Data section.
IATI Standard aims to make information about aid spending easier to access, use and understand.
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is a global initiative—comprised of a broad coalition of bilateral, multilateral, and private donor organizations, as well as countries that receive aid— and civil society organizations to make aid information more accessible and useful. The IATI data standard, the emerging international standard for reporting aid information, is designed to allow aid donors to organize information on their activities in a streamlined, comparable format with three components: 1) the Activity Standard; 2) the Organisation Standard; and 3) the IATI Codelists.
IATI has developed and agreed a common, open, international standard – the IATI standard. This sets guidelines for publishing information about aid spending. IATI will not create a new database. It will not replace work already being done, by organisations such as the OECD-Development Assistance Committee (DAC), to produce statistics about past aid flows and aid activities. Instead, the IATI standard builds on – and goes beyond – the standards and definitions that have already been agreed.
The IATI standard consists of two main standards: an "organisation standard", designed for publishing forward-looking budget data; and an "activity standard" for publishing details of past, current and planned aid activities or projects.
Additionally, there are various code lists that provide common definitions for specifying values such as sector descriptions, geographical information and types of financial transaction.
The standards and code lists, as well as XML schemas and user guides are available at the IATI standard website.
Last update: Nov 24 2011
Data is published part of the International Aid Transparency Initiative by individual donors, often in a different file for each country they work in, and is listed in the IATI Registry. This tool uses data fetched from all those files, and aggregated together in an XML database to allow you to query the data and convert it into the format you want.