IATI has many fields which don’t always serve a clear purpose. To keep things simple, we ask you to fill in information only once, even though there are several spaces for things like documents or locations. In the Netherlands Publishing Guidelines, the rule of thumb is: if you can fill it in on activity level, don’t do it somewhere else.

An example can be found in the result section of your IATI activity. When you add a result, you can add many bits of information that you already entered when you created the activity. A few examples:

  • Under result: don’t add document links.
  • Under result indicator: don’t add document links
  • Under the baseline: don’t add dimensions, document links, or locations.
  • Under the period target: don’t add dimensions, document links, or locations.
  • Under the period actual: don’t add dimensions, document links, or locations.

All of these elements have a better place: directly on the activity. You should have documents, but you add them to the activity once and nowhere else. You may have locations, but they also should be mentioned in the activity. Dimensions should not be used at all – this is the topic of an earlier Technical Tip.

Using these unnecessary fields creates issues in many dashboards, including our dashboards like METIS and the Strengthening Civil Society dashboard. They are also superfluous. To avoid issues – and extra work! – only give this information once: on the activity level.

Technical Tips are simple ways you can improve your data. Want more? All Technical Tips can be found here.