By making these elements mandatory if budgets are supplied, (budget/period-start and budget/period-end) we think this will improve compliance with the spirit of the standard and improve data quality.
Modify budget/period-start and budget/period-end : make mandatory
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Herman van Loon I agree. But this change does not seem to be backward compatible. Shouldn't this be an integer upgrade change?
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David Carpenter Decimal Upgrades and Backward Compatibility
IATI's decimal upgrades must (as agreed by the Steering Committee) be backwardly compatible. This means that data produced for a particular version of the standard should have the same meaning, functionality and validity in all subsequent decimal versions of the same integer.
We had proposed to make a number of changes in the current decimal upgrade that would have make a number of optional fields mandatory. (These are the iso-date for activity dates, and the period start and end dates for budgets.) It has been pointed out to us that these changes break the backward compatibility test, as activities without these fields created under the current version of the standard would fail validation in the new version.
These items will therefore be placed in the proposal queue for the first integer upgrade.
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Siem Vaessen Making this mandatory would certainly have my vote.
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David Carpenter Moving to the integer upgrade forum
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Mark Brough Agree. Period-start and period-end date should be mandatory if the budget element is used.
Additionally, suggest guidance should strongly encourage at least quarterly (or monthly) disaggregation of data in order to align with fiscal years.
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Herman van Loon Agree with making Period-start and period-end date mandatory.
Severely doubt the use of disaggregating budgetdata for the purpose of aligning with recipient fiscal years. The data should in my opinion reflect the reality of the budgetcycle of the publisher and nothing more. Artificial disaggregation a yearly budget into quarters or months, assumes an even distribution of the disbursements during a year. This is in practice almost never the case. The moment of disbursement is in our case very often dependant on the actual progress of the activity. The implementing organisation asks for a disbursement at the moment the prevoius disbursed funds are used up. Disaggregation would therefore suggest a non-existing and therefore wrong picture of future cash-flows.
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Bill Anderson Please note that the Version 2.01 proposal involves five issues:
- the budget element should be repeated for each year of the activity's duration
- period-start/@iso-date is MANDATORY and must be a valid ISO format
- period-end/@iso-date is MANDATORY and must be a valid ISO format
- period-end/@iso-date must be after period-start/@iso-date
- Each budget MUST cover a period no longer than 1 year
The budget element is NOT a container for the total budget. This should be reported in transactions as a commitment.. Rather it is to provide forward-looking planning information which is required as annual breakdowns.
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