Data collection for the 2014 ATI ended on June 30^th. As a newbie to the ATI process, it sounded like perfect timing. Summer was just beginning, and there was plenty of time for the team to put their feet up and enjoy some sun before the Index launch in October, right?

Wrong. If anything, we have been busier since data collection closed. The deadline brought a flurry of activity, although donor organisations have been working all year to make improvements to the transparency of their aid publications.

A few highlights:

• 6 donor organisations published to the IATI Registry for the first time including three of the world’s biggest donors: France, Japan and the United States (Department of State and  PEPFAR), as well as one of the world’s largest charitable foundations, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
• 17 donors have updated the implementation schedules which detail their plans for future publication. Commitments to publishing by 2015 have been reaffirmed and organisations have adjusted timelines to be more specific. 5 have published an implementation schedule outlining their plans for publishing to IATI for the first time.
• 4 donor organisations launched new IATI driven data portals which demonstrate how IATI can provide up to date, comparable and accessible project information. (Take a look: Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden and UNICEF).

All these changes have been collated, checked, cross-checked, double checked…and checked again. None of this is made easier by the fact that much aid information is still not easy to access or compare, as we found during the data collection process. Nevertheless, we eventually finalised the dataset and have been busy analysing the data and writing up our findings.

You’ll have to wait until October 8th to find out anymore!

Guest post by Ruth Salmon, Research Assistant. She is leads on data collection for the 2014 Aid Transparency Index.