This proposal has been discussed amongst the IATI Technical Team following the end of the initial suggestion phase of the v2.02 upgrade.

The IATI Technical Team support this proposal.  Further updates on work towards the practical implementation of this proposal into the version 2.02 of the IATI standard will be posted as part of this thread.

Please see below for the technical implementation that is suggested in the Version 2.02 - Formal Proposal:

New element: crs-add/channel-code [MODIFIED 27-Nov-2015, with improved definition]

• Add new element to the activity standard: channel-code

• Example

• Current usage

<crs-add>
  ...
</crs-add>

• Proposed usage

<crs-add>
  ...
  <channel-code>21039</channel-code>
</crs-add>

• Add definition:
  ‘The CRS channel code for this activity. This should only be used for reporting to CRS. The code list contains both organisation types and names of organisations. For non-CRS purposes these should be reported using the participating-org element.’

New codelist: CRS Channel Code

• A new non-embedded codelist will be added: ‘CRSChannelCode’, with values

• [Values to be replicated from the DAC codelist (in their codelist spreadsheet tab ‘Channel codes’)]

Would it be possible to provide more details on how the channel code classification will be integrated into the schema?  Since the channel code structure is used to classify/identify organisations when reporting to the OECD-DAC, it would make sense to streamline this element, with the organisation identifier/type, to avoid duplication of the information.  For example, the channel codes are currently used as organisation identifier for some and the Organisation type replicate some of the channel category and sub-category.  Maybe it would make more sense to improve the classification or to put the channel code element at the organisation identifier level instead of crs-add?

Thanks for your comments,

Hello Jeremie,

We recognise that the DAC channel codes contain two different pieces of information. All codes that end in 00 are types of organisation and all that don’t are names of organisations - from our point of view, we have a codelist for types of organisations - http://iatistandard.org/201/codelists/OrganisationType/, and we have a method for naming organisations - http://iatistandard.org/201/organisation-identifiers/.

In IATI’s terms, these are distinct, and in terms of the crs-add, there won’t be any collisions/duplications because of the ‘00’ convention. If this isn’t what you meant, could you clarify the question with an example?

This proposal has been added as a GitHub issue, for inclusion in the version 2.02 development branch of the appropriate code repository:

• New element: crs-add/channel-code: https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Schemas/issues/274

• New codelist: CRS Channel Code: https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Codelists-NonEmbedded/issues/85

This proposal has now been incorporated into a version 2.02 code repositories (see the above GitHub issue links for the schema and codelist for technical details). The relevant pages on a development version of the 2.02 reference and documentation site are available to view here:

• iati-activity/crs-add/channel-code
• New codelist: CRS Channel Code

We welcome scrutiny on the implementation of this proposal and encourage the community to feedback and suggest solutions for any errors, omissions and problems. This should be done before Monday 7 December, when the process will commence to release version 2.02 as a live version of the IATI Standard. More information on the inspection phase is available here.