OVERVIEW

UN OCHA is a coordinating body for humanitarian aid flows. Multiple sources of data have been used to assess OCHA, including IATI data published through the Financial Tracking Service (FTS), a clearing house of information on humantarian aid flows, and information on OCHA’s role as a donor and manager of pooled funds available on OCHA’s website. OCHA’s efforts to publish information on its activities must be understood in the context of its organisational structure and its many roles – as a recipient of donor funds; a humanitarian donor; a manager of three pooled funds; and a secondary publisher of information on humanitarian aid flows. In most cases, provision of data to the FTS is voluntary so OCHA’s responsibility for publishing high quality data through the FTS should be understood in this context.

OCHA should be congratulated for being the first humanitarian agency to begin publishing data to IATI in February 2013. It should also be commended for implementing an extension beyond the current IATI standard to cover information on emergencies and appeals. The FTS IATI data is published live out of its database. OCHA published an unambitious implementation schedule for FTS, planning to include only 32% of IATI fields, but this may be a reflection of the level of information provided by donors to FTS. IATI data could be a useful way to populate FTS, improving the quality of information already held there. OCHA could also report fields for its own data.

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