The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) provides a standard framework for publishing aid and development information. IATI is a ‘multi-stakeholder initiative’ with members including governments, multilateral organisations and civil society groups. The IATI Standard allows funders and implementing organisations to publish their data on aid and development finance in a common format that allows for comparison across organisations. Over one million development and humanitarian activities have been published in the IATI Standard.

Publishing in the IATI Standard requires set information to be disclosed in a standard format, including a project’s title and the type of work being done. Financial and transaction data, such as budgets, commitments and disbursements are also standardised. The advantage of this is that information can be easily understood and compared. It is also timely and can be both current and forward-looking. Aid organisations can also publish more detailed documentation about their projects, including contracts, evaluations and results. Data published in the Standard is open, which means it can be used and reused by anyone and everyone for free.

The IATI Standard is machine readable, so computers are able to quickly download and analyse the data. Importantly, the forward-looking data published in the Standard allows partner countries and organisations receiving aid and development finance to plan their budgets better.