Budget identifier

[markbrough]

Description
The budget classification is a way of linking the activity to the recipient country government’s own budget codes. This is only expected if the activity is at least in the implementation phase, and if the aid type is not budget support.

2013 Index tests

capital-spend exists (if activity-status/@code is at least 2 and (default-aid-type or transaction/aid-type is not A01))?
country-budget-items exists (if activity-status/@code is at least 2 and (default-aid-type or transaction/aid-type is not A01))?

Issues

No issues have been identified.

Questions

1. Should the code of individual <budget-item>s have to conform to the IATI budget identifier codelist?

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

[theosande]

No, major problem with IATI identifier is that it is not up to donors to determine the budget architecture of the recipient country's government. Limiting the vocabulary to the IATI budget idientifier codelist even further limits recipient country's ownership for their own budget architecture.

[johnadamsDFID]

We are concerned that this is another instance where simply having a field will be scored, but no regard given to the meaningfulness of the field. Are all the country-budget-items using a vocabulary (like the Spine or indeed partner country budget classifications directly?).

[akshaysinha]

To be honest, I don't think it makes sense to limit the codes for budget-item to just the IATI list. It presents significant problems for our country partners to try to match their own codes to this list, without option of adding others or drill down to more specific ones. It would be good to have some flexibility here.

[HeatherDHanson]

would like to see this indicator developed fully and to have sufficient understanding of the end uses to ensure that investment in collecting and reporting the indicators has a significant impact on the ability of country governments to utilize the information. Until this can be clearly defined in the standard, I think it is probably premature to decide on what a fair mechanism would be to score this indicator

[YohannaLoucheur]

Agree with HeatherDHanson. As we have argued before, it is too early to test this indicator, since the methodology is far from being finalized.

[markbrough]

Thanks for all the comments.

For 2014

The second test (country-budget-items) will be altered to check whether the country-budget-items[@vocabulary="1"]/budget-item/@code is on the IATI BudgetIdentifier codelist.

Notes

• The budget identifier does not determine the architecture of a partner country's own budget; it aims to map to whatever classification they may use.
• Donors could score for this indicator by publishing the specific vote code that their aid matches to.
• However, the Spine may be more practical because partner country CoAs may change, and there are many of them, so donors wouldn’t necessarily be expected to have them in their systems.