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The OECD is now making its Creditor Reporting System (CRS) 2010 and 2011 data on DAC members available in IATI XML format. This data on development finance can now be downloaded in four different formats: Excel, TXT/CSV, PC-axis, and XML. Different formats (such as software development, research, etc.) serve the diverse needs of numerous audiences; therefore, a variety of formats ensures that the data can be used widely and for a multitude of purposes.

This is an important step in making information about development finance easier to extract, locate, and compare. The DAC's CRS is the only international standard able to produce robust activity-level data and reliable statistics on total development finance flows (ODA, OOF, ODF, etc.). The objective of converting CRS data is to ensure  that this information has greater visibility and usability.

XML format is the computer-readable “mark-up” language used by programmers to extract and present data in a comparable and accessible way. Data will now also be comparable to the standard process put in place by the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), with whom the OECD has worked closely together in this exercise.

The current XML file reflects DAC members’ annual ODA flows in a transaction-based version of the IATI XML format. The OECD will continue to advance CRS data conversion as part of its drive to promote the transparency agenda. In a next step, the OECD will split up the (currently heavy and mostly for programmers) file into smaller files, by individual donors and recipients, increase the coverage of donors included in the XML data, and make the annual DAC forward spending survey available in XML format.


More detail can be found in this Technical Note and the CRS-IATI XML file (.zip – 37MB).

Technical note

What do you need to know?

• We have used the latest version of the IATI standard (version 1.02).

• Each CRS record has its own IATI unique identifier (see method below).

• Data presented are for years 2010-2011, for DAC Members (DAC Countries + EC).

• All amounts are in US dollars, without decimals.

• Field contents are expressed in English (except for descriptive fields which may contain national language/descriptive texts).

Please see below the additional general and technical notes in relation to the implementation of the CRS-IATI XML file.

The CRS-IATI XML file has been loaded on the OECD.STAT website where other CRS bulk files can be found (name of file is CRS_IATI_2010_2011.zip). The XML file has been compressed (from 740MB to 37MB).

General Notes

We have been advised by the IATI Technical Advisory Group on presentation/format of reporting and participating organisations (see code format below). Complete CRS transaction history is not presented as this is technically difficult to retrieve from our database and link the associated transactions. Therefore, each XML record is a separate CRS transaction. In order to reduce the CRS-IATI file size (already 740MB), and in accordance with IATI standard 1.02, some of the standard column labels have been omitted (recipient name, etc.).

Specifications

Current version of IATI standard is version 1.02  (http://wiki.iatistandard.org/standard/documentation/1.02/start).

Format for reporting organization and participating organizations (as advised by IATI) :
<reporting-org  ref="OECD">Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development</reporting-org> OECD
<participating-org role="funding" type="10" ref="GB">United Kingdom</participating-org> Country name
<participating-org role="extending" ref="GB-1">Department for International Development</participating-org> agency
<participating-org role="implementing" ref="51000">University, college or other teaching institution, research institute or think-tank</participating-org> channel

The IATI identifier is the concatenation of the unique organisation identifier (donor and agency code), the reporting year and the crsid.
IATI_id = ISO2 Donor code - agencycode - reportingyear – crsid
ex : AT-1-2010-1990006002

Management of tied aid:
If a commitment exists and if this commitment is equal to amountuntied then Tied status = 5 (Untied)
If a commitment exists and if this commitment is equal to amountpartialtied then Tied status = 3 (Partially Tied)
If a commitment exists and if this commitment is equal to amounttied then Tied status = 4 (Tied)
Otherwise, tying status is NULL

For more information please contact us at DAC.Contact@oecd.org.

Related Documents

International Development Statistics (IDS) online databases