Codelists (and the Single Source Of Truth)

[caprenter]

Recently the IATI Technical Team met to discuss the state of codelists in the IATI standard.

There are many issues to be addressed, and we think we may have some solutions (not all!), and with a Technical Advisory Group meeting planned for the future, it seems the time is right, if long over due, to look at those.

We have also started on our Single Source Of Truth project as a way of making sure all our information is in one place, version controlled and re-usable: (see previous announcement

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/iati-technical/8crZVYE9sjE )

We've started to write up our thoughts around codelists in the following doc, and we'd like it if people could get involved. Please feel free to read, contribute and ask questions of the tech team, and follow our progress over the coming months.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aeHXrDOMMHGu7aZ2R3D7nKTf9bhe6N34_n0bOtH9vJE

We want to use the Single Source Of Truth (SSOT) as a way to manage our upgrade process for the 1.04 upgrade, and you will find codelists are constructed differently in the SSOT. Don't Panic! We will be using these codelists to construct backwards compatible versions for 1.04.

Finally, I'd just like to say thank you to all the people that have, and continue to contribute to improve the codelists used in IATI. 

All the best

David

[caprenter]

Oops, never post to list when someone is calling you to your tea.

The link for the document should be:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oeH-8BFB__2IYF4MLnUwx2LcXZCVd5e-iYsXtQ4ViTk/edit

Cheers

David

[Owen Scott]

Hi David,

Taking a look at this and definitely have some comments, but it's "view only". Is that intentional? If so I'll provide comments here, otherwise in the doc.

Thanks,

Owen

[Rolf Kleef]

Likewise :-)

One major concern I do want to mention already: predictability or
stability for publishers. Today, my published file may validate against
the ISO 3166 country list, tomorrow "Sudan" may have changed territorial
coverage, or "Yugoslavia" may have ceased to exist.

Such changes should be "change management" (I can fix it in my next
published data set), not "error recovery" (I need to fix it now).

It will make the job of validating and reconciliation a lot easier.

--Rolf.

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Internet trailblazer. Weaving the web to help humanity. Implementing
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[David Megginson]

Rolf is right about dependencies on external standards: it does put a bigger burden on IATI maintaining copies of lists that others are already maintaining, but there might not be any way around it.  

I guess this is a flaw in the whole linked-data/semantic-web mental model (even though IATI itself isn't RDF) -- if we're pulling in information from many different places, maintained by many different parties, it's hard to have any stability for the parts of development that aren't fully dynamic, like documentation, UI work, validation scripts, organisational workflows, etc.

On the other hand, we do need a way for orgs who want to do so to be able to reference South Sudan as soon as it comes into being, rather than waiting six months for the next IATI code list release, so it might be necessary at least to optionally allow new codes before the IATI change-management process finishes.

Cheers, David

[caprenter]

Hi Folks

My intention was for people to air comments on this thread, and not have the document fully open, but if you would like some editing rights, just let me know. Rolf and Owen I'll add these email addresses to the doc. Please feel free to add stuff - and thanks!

David