The main advantages with this open standard for publishing digital information on development cooperation in The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is that the information is more current and prospective, as well as comparable to other partners and donors. It contains past, present and planned activities of major international organizations like the World Bank and national development cooperation agencies like Sida as well as small civil society organisation projects.
In total, eleven organisations have begun to publish aid data in the IATI registry and a score of other organisations and countries are underway. This opens up for the development of systems and solutions which can display and visualize the IATI-formatted data. This is of interest to actors within development cooperation, donors and partner countries that need tools to plan, review and follow up on activities. However, in the end this benefits those who pay for the assistance - the taxpayers - and the people reached by the assistance.
- In this way, donor and non-governmental organisations as well as recipients can become aware that transparency is a prerequisite for effective aid. With open data on programs and projects, it is easier for partners and other stakeholders to follow what the different donors are doing and what is working well. This takes accountability to a new level, says Joachim Beijmo, Director of Communications at Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
The fact that a country or an organisation follows the IATI standard does not mean that the statistics is published in a new database, but it is a way to describe the assistance work according to standards and definitions that already exist. This means for example that a recipient country can read data in the same mode from all donors with which the country cooperates.
For more information or interviews, please contact the Sida Press Office, tel (+)46-8-698 55 55 or e-mail us at 
Facts about the IATI standard
• All contributing organisations publish IATI-formatted XML files and make the latest version available to the IATI secretariat, who review and approve files. Once this is done the data is available from the IATI registry. Each file contains data from one publisher and a country or a region.
• The Swedish transparency also means that data is available with an open API (Application Programming Interface). This means that anyone can view data and create new applications and visualizations of the aid data presented. Using standard techniques such as REST and JSON, it is possible for researchers, journalists, students and the public to present, visualize and interpret data. The information may be used freely.
