dac_codelist_issues.md

Major issues:

• Flow type 38 (Other Private flows at market terms - Non-banks) doesn’t exist in the XLS. This suggests the two lists might not be auto-generated from the same source. That’s a worry.

Minor issues:

• status, withdrawal-date and activation-date (e.g.) should all be attributes (according to the codelist schema). I think IATI says status is supposed to say “active” or “withdrawn” or something, but I’ve forgotten where that’s documented. In any case, the DAC XML uses the following statuses: "Active", "Discontinued", "Active-MCD", "Active- Pilot", "Vonlontary basis" [sic].

• codelists/codelist/metadata/name/narrative probably shouldn’t include double quotes (e.g.).

• codelists/codelist/coefficient (e.g.) and codelists/codelist/notes (e.g.) should use a custom namespace.

• Aid Type categories F (Debt relief) and G (Administrative costs not included elsewhere) both have trailing space in the code. It shouldn’t be there.

• The SectorCategory codelist is referenced, but is not provided. This is a problem for IATI, since it’s used in the standard.

• Various codelists are missing (e.g. DAC members, Agencies, Multilateral donors etc.) None of these are used in the IATI standard, but it may still be of use to others to provide them in a machine readable format. (For instance, I’d find them useful for auto-generating XM-DAC org IDs.)

General comments:

• IATI merges channel codes and channel categories, whereas these are separated in the DAC XML.

• IATI uses a Region codelist, which is derived from the DAC Recipients codelist (and is called Income-group in the XML)