Proposal - New code called Predecessor in the Related Activity Type Codelist

[el-clemente]

Current Rule

There are five codes in the Related Activity Type codelist and I would like to request an update to add a new code called Predecessor into the list.

Proposed Change

Add the following new code into the https://iatistandard.org/en/iati-standard/203/codelists/relatedactivitytype/ codelist with the following details

Name: Predecessor
Description: An IATI activity that provided foundational work for the implementation of this activity.

Rationale

As the IATI standard has matured and organisations have been publishing to it for an increasing length of time, there are an increasing number of new activities that are either directly related to closed activities (e.g. phase 2 of a closed activity) or are built upon the work of previously implemented activities. This new codelist code would provide the opportunity to create a lateral link from new activities to previously implemented activity(s) that would show data consumers a longitudinal view of an organisation's work that the new activity builds upon.

Impact

Adding a new code to the codelist will not impact any existing functionality and will the same rules apply to this related activity code as the others, namely that it must point at an existing IATI activity.

This change will allow the lateral linking of activities to show which new activities have been created after existing activities were closed.

This change will more likely impact organisations that have been publishing data to IATI for a over three years - but this is dependent on the average operational lifespan of an activity within a given organisation.

Principles Assessment

Principle	Assessment
Increase Simplicity to ensure ease of use	Allows lateral links between activities to show the history of an intervention.
Improve Conceptual Alignment to ensure intuitive understanding.	Allows the history of specific interventions to be accurately modelled by linking activities.
Increase Modularity so that concepts can be separated	No Impact.
Increase the Precision of the Standard	Creates links between activities rather than relying on fuzzy matching or using the TAG element
Improve the Integrity & coherence of the Standard	Allows you to see the history of an intervention.
Integrate the expectation of Change so that the Standard can continue to evolve	As the standard increases in age, there will be a greater need to provide a way for organisations to link activities to previously implemented ones.

Source Materials & Evidence

FCDO have published data to IATI for around 17 years. Recently, there have occasions where programme teams have requested a link be created between a Phase 2 activity and its predecessor activity. At present, FCDO are using the description field with standard text "This programme is a continuation of Activity ID - Activity Title" , to link these activities, but this is far from an ideal solution. The codelist change would mean that we could publish this relationship as a link in the data which allow data consumers to gather data from a predecessor activity – without needing to parse description text.

[stevieflow]

Thanks for this @el-clemente

Just wanted to note that in the other-identifier element, there is a code A3:

A3	Previous Activity Identifier	The standard insists that once an activity has been reported to IATI its identifier MUST NOT be changed, even if the reporting organisation changes its organisation identifier. There may be exceptional circumstances in which this rule cannot be followed, in which case the previous identifier should be reported using this code.

A key difference between other-identifier and related-activity is that the former allows declaration of the owner of the identifier, whereas related-activity just requests the identifier itself.

Do you see any potential crossovers or confusions?

Thanks

[el-clemente]

HI Steven,

In the related-activity proposal, the activity is a new completely new activity.

For example, Generic Programme Phase 2 a different ID from Generic Programme Phase 1, because they have both gone through a separate approval process are are considered separate.

The case you have mentioned is where the programme identifier has changed, at FCDO we have kept the programme identifiers the same even when the Organisation Identifier has changed (e.g. GB-1 and GB-GOV-1)

Though we would need to be careful with the wording to avoid confusion.

[olehjo]

I recognise the request for such relations, but find that the requested 'relations' are of too different types to fit within one concept of Predecessors. Just an idea: If colleagues argue that any number of individual activities should be taken as part of one, bigger 'story', one could suggest that they publish that shared story - and thus allowed the activities to be joined by shared reference (document-link) to that story?

[el-clemente]

I recognise the request for such relations, but find that the requested 'relations' are of too different types to fit within one concept of Predecessors. Just an idea: If colleagues argue that any number of individual activities should be taken as part of one, bigger 'story', one could suggest that they publish that shared story - and thus allowed the activities to be joined by shared reference (document-link) to that story?

HI OJ,

Thank you for the feedback.

If I have understood correctly the Story concept would be an overarching entity to combine two H1 activities, but that would not fit into our current H1-H2 activity pattern - this type of relationship does not in our source Programme Management or Finance systems.

As FCDO automatically generate our output IATI data, we need to use a data element that fits with what we store internally against our H1 and H2 data.

My motivation with this request is to try to model this relationship in IATI with minimal impact to the standard, the naming Predecessor was my attempt at explaining the relationship but I am happy to update my request with a different word/phrase to explain this relationship.