I’m working with an organisation who wish to publish results data.
For any indicator, there will be multiple measurements (periods) that provide target and actuals, like this:
The standard allows this:
- a result can have one or more indicator
- any indicator can have more than one period (which then holds the target and actual data)
So far so good. But… how do we actually maintain this data, for the production of IATI. And then - use it!
Missing in the schema is the ability to somehow identify the result(s) and indicator(s), meaning that whilst you might want to say in the above model:
the actual value 100 relates to the period Q2 1617, and contributes to Indicator A, which is a part of Result 1.
It doesn’t seem possible to declare the concepts of Result 1 and Indicator A.
(the ref attribute of transaction might be a good analogy here)
This becomes a real difficulty when you’re managing data on multiple activities, all with many results, a range of indicators and various measurement periods.
Of course, it’s possible to do this directly in the XML, but the struggle is how to manage this in the lead up to publishing - whether spreadsheets, in house systems or elsewhere. The Aidstream interface would enable this multi-multi recording, but I assume there’s some database behind it - Anjesh Tuladhar , do you provide a databse key (or similar) for the above elements?
And - at the other end, if someone wants to convert some XML to a spreadsheet / other format - how do packages then handle such multi-multi relationships, with IDs?
Herman van Loon Rolf Kleef Pelle Aardema what’s your experience?
SJohns Mike Smith Roderick Besseling did this come up in the CSO work on results?
Pelle Aardema Hayden Field many thanks for your thoughts - much appreciated
Side note: With Organisations we are well-drilled into terms of the fact that the string DFID, or D.F.I.D is not really satisfactory to point precisely at the entity known-as DFID. To do this, we also need to include the reference attribute GB-GOV-1, which uniquely identifies that organisation. We know that isn’t widespread in IATI, but the mechanism and willing is there
This is what I miss in results. My example may have mislead, as it looked like the results and indicators had unique references. I’ve tried the following (please note - this is not meant to indicate any actual real data / context).
In this example an organisation is publishing results in two different activities. It’s a one-to-one relationship though, so any measurements are just associated with the relevant indicator and result via the Activity ID
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But then:
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By luck (!) the names of the indicators are slightly different, so we can still identify the measurements accordingly, but I think this illustrates your point:
pelleaardema:
Are we therefore expecting people to manage the data (whether they are publishing it via any means, or trying to use it via some other way) to rely on strings for identification?
Apologies - I still don’t think I’m explaining the issue in prose tremendously well. I’m thinking specifically of instances when this data is flat/normalised either before publication or in use. I spoke to Ben Webb - IATI Secretariat briefly about this, He said: “In Open Contracting everything has a UID…”
Sorry, I’m not sure if I understand the problem you’re trying to express here.
The relation between the value->indicator->result comes from the nested structure… and if organisations choose to include two (nearly) similar indicators under the same result that sounds like a badly designed result framework, rather than an IATI problem.
And with the new upgrade indicators already get the possibility to include a unique reference.
Where am I missing the point?