Another approach to IATI publishing

So, because here in Canada we we have such great data available about our NP sector, and because we are such big fans of the IATI standard, we thought that we would explore how the CRA data could be used to fill in the blanks about international aid activities of Canadian charities. The results were fairly promising. Take a look for yourself: http://charityaid.poweredbydata.org

We build a working prototype during the Open Data for Development Challenge which took place this winter here in Montreal. It took us a while to get back to it, but we sanded down a few rough edges and published it recently.

From our email to the Open-Development mailing list:

We built a proof-of-concept site using charity filings from our (Canadian) charity registrar to feed the site. The data is very limited, but it's about a lot of organizations - both foundations and charities. There is a ton of data which I don't believe that IATI measures will ever collect (smaller orgs). And there is some more data in the charity filing that we are not using but which I think would be relevant.

We believe that this approach is interesting because it is data required by another arm of government and therefore it requires no added work by the charity.

We're still considering the idea of creating (very incomplete) IATI feeds from this data and how to leverage this data to encourage charities to adopt publishing more IATI data. If anyone wants to discuss either or both of those, please get in touch.

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