Unique ID

[markbrough]

Description The activity identifier is a unique reference ID for the activity, e.g. a project number.

2013 Index test

iati-identifier exists?

Issues

No issues have been identified.

Questions

1. Some organisations appear to be publishing randomly-generated numbers for this field. Should an iati-identifier be formatted in a particular way, to determine if it relates to a real project ID? What might the format be, and how could it be measured?

2014 Index test We are not planning to change this test in 2014, unless feedback suggests there is a strong case for doing so.

[bill-anderson]

Two tests can be run on the iati-identifier:

• The first portion of the identifier must be the same as the reporting-org/@ref
• The identifier must be globally unique. (i.e. a check should be done for duplicate ids)

[akshaysinha]

A simple thing, one problem is when organization use invalid iati-identifier code in their files or misspell organization name and/or abbreviation field, which make it impossible to track funding and causes traceability problems across iati files. Right now there is no penalty for this and everything is awarded points as long as something exists in that field. I think validation of these fields against reference table should be strictly enforced to fix these quality issues- sort of simple test but could be good start for linkage reasons.

[YohannaLoucheur]

Bill's suggestion seems sensible, and the first one seems very easy to implement (maybe not so for the second one).

[markbrough]

Thanks for all the comments.

For 2014

In addition to the 2013 tests, we will add a new test, to assess whether the reporting-org/@ref occurs in the iati-identifier/text()

If the reporting-org is 44000 then the following would pass this test:

<iati-identifier>44000-P126875</iati-identifier>

While this example would not pass the test:

<iati-identifier>P126875</iati-identifier>

Notes

• We also support the second suggestion above, that all iati-identifiers should be globally unique. We will consider how we could technically implement this in future years.