International Aid Transparency Initiative
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) aims to make information about aid spending easier to find, use and compare. The former CIDA became a member of IATI in November 2011. It published its first data sets on October 31, 2012 and two versions of its IATI Implementation Schedule since December 2012.
The data presented in the data files published by Global Affairs Canada in accordance with the IATI Standard are also used in the Project Browser. Some elements of the IATI files are not yet available on the Project Browser; they will be added over time.
Canada has chosen to publish bilingual files rather than separate English and French files containing the same data. This should facilitate data analysis and avoid mistakes in aggregating data. Codes are used rather than words, wherever possible (e.g. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) country code rather than Peru and Pérou). These codes can be cross-referenced to the IATI codelists available on their website.
Global Affairs Canada publishes three data sets: (1) an Activity File containing information about projects with Implementation or Completion status; (2) an Activity File containing information about projects with a Post-Completion status; and (3) an Organisation File with department-level information.
The data is updated daily (on business days). As of May 1st 2015, the files are based on version 2.01 of the IATI Standard.
Activity File
The IATI Standard refers to "activities", which for Global Affairs Canada means international development projects. These files contain several data elements about projects, such as titles, descriptions, partners, results expected and achieved, sectors, policy markers, planned and actual disbursements, links to select documents and so on. They also indicate which countries or regions benefit from the projects.
Organisation File
This file contains information about the department’s annual forward planning budget, planned country-programmable aid spending by country, approved commitments to key partner organizations and links to key documents such as strategies and reports published on Global Affairs Canada's website.
Download data sets
- Have you reviewed the data field definitions for this data set?
- Activity File Status = Implementation (2) or Completion (3) (.XML file)
- Activity File Status = Post-completion (4) (.XML file)
- Organisation File (.XML file)
- GAC Specific Policy Markers (.CSV file)
