Dear members of the IATI community,
Given the recent change of authorities in Afghanistan and Myanmar, a conversation about the balance between transparent and open development cooperation data and ‘doing no harm’ to implementing partners, including how data publishers are moving to edit, anonymise or otherwise restrict their data, has recently been gaining steam. As such, the time is ripe for a discussion on ‘responsible transparency’ more generally, but also in regards to implications for IATI and its community of publishers.
Please read this background note on Responsible Transparency: Considerations for IATI for further context. You can also download a .pdf-version of this report via the attachment below.
Guiding Questions for Discussion
Question #1
Where should the balance be between open, transparent, and relevant data, and the need to protect privacy and security more generally, but also in situations of fragility or emergency? Though individual publishers are responsible for ensuring that sensitive data is not released, how can IATI as an initiative facilitate and support those publishers?
Question #2
Is the mixed response to crisis situations and relevant restriction of data the result of an explicit policy from within IATI publishers’ own organisations? If yes, how do publishers decide which sensitive data will be covered in these exclusion policies?
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Why do these policies differ across publishers and what can be learned from this?
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Further, why were different policies followed, for instance, during the transition of authorities in Myanmar and, more recently, in Afghanistan?
Question #3
Building on the above, should IATI provide additional information / guidance to publishers in regard to what types of sensitive information they might consider excluding from their IATI datasets?
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If yes, with a view to facilitating data management practices and promoting responsible data, would publishers find it helpful for IATI to, for instance, develop a classification system regarding what might constitute sensitive data (pre-publication), and guidelines on monitoring and evaluation for sensitive data (post-publication)?
Thank you for participating in this Discussion! A summary will follow shortly.
Thank you for jumping straight into the question!
1. I know that there will be session on this at the VCE (12-13 October) and the idea is that the discussions then and the responses here will lead to some concrete action points.
2. Good point that it may not be data on entire countries, but sometimes it is a limited set of information that is sensitive. But do I understand you correctly that there may be an interest for the countries where activities are taking place to not be transparent about this detailed information?
3. This sounds like a pragmatic solution but I have some follow-up questions. Would this not also make it easier also for data users to identify where sensitive data is? And do you think members and publishers would be able to agree when information becomes sensitive, when it loses its sensitivity and if the information is only sensitive for certain time periods?