A recent cross-check all of the codes on the IATI Sector codelist at http://iatistandard.org/201/codelists/Sector/ and the latest version of the DAC purpose codes published at http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/dacandcrscodelists.htm identified 27 mismatches.
Please see this proposal in our consultations forum for more details.
This changes will be implemented after one week, assuming that there are no objections.
Rolf Kleef - indeed, this makes a lot of sense. My understanding is that previously, when codes were deleted from the DAC sector code list, they were not deleted from the IATI code list so that it would still be possible to look up against them. That becomes particularly important if publishers are discouraged from including the text corresponding to a particular code. But yes, it does raise a wider issue of versioning of codelists (probably also including embedded codelists). I could see that his would become particularly problematic if an old code was re-used with a different meaning.
I’m suggesting the deletion of codes is moved to the decimal process so that any potential negative implications could be explored / discussed further there.
Also I know that Ben Webb - IATI Secretariat deliberately did not delete codes in the past, so maybe he has more information on the reasons for that…
Yes, I would advise against removing codes from the IATI NonEmbedded lists, as they are valid for historical data. In the case of DAC, the codes suggested for removal are needed to describe historic data (ie. data about projects that took place in the past).
My proposal for dealing with this problem better is at https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Codelists-NonEmbedded/pull/51 and there’s some additional information at https://iati.titanpad.com/94