The DFL aid data research residency of the last year has wrapped up, producing four compelling papers by four teams of promising scholars. A summary of the first of these papers by research resident Jun-young Choi and DFL researcher Grace Choi has just been published on the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre blog.
Based on the positive reception DFL's reports received from with the IATI community, the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre has formally published our full report. You can download it here: Final report published by UNDP Seoul Policy Centre: Strengthening the IATI Data Value Chain: Pathways to Enhanced Impact, December 2025
DFL is pleased to announce that it has signed a second low value grant (LVG) with the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre to continue its work in improving the accessibility and utility of development data through a research based exploration of development data employing emerging analytical tools.
This research initiative will focus on ODA Analytics Research, which will advance academic understanding of Official Development Assistance (ODA) through comprehensive analysis of its determinants, effects on donor countries, and relationships with other policy domains such as trade, investment, and diplomatic relations. This research aims to:
This project will recruit four teams as Research Residents to conduct research on predicting aid and aid's impacts through innovative tools, like natural language processing, and data sets of their choosing, like travel records. These teams will work closely with core DFL members, the development cooperation team at the USPC, and USPC's own recruited talent.
DFL has successfully completed its evaluation of the IATI interface for the United Nations Seoul Policy Centre (USPC). The report systematically evaluates the user experience of the main IATI interface and makes suggestions for improvement.
Here is the executive summary.
Data plays a crucial role in informing project planning and management. As understanding of aid motivations and delivery mechanisms has advanced, digital public goods (DPGs) have emerged as pivotal components of development cooperation. By improving access to information, DPGs enable governments and organizations to make data-driven decisions, enhance public service delivery, and promote transparency and accountability. They also facilitate cross-border collaboration and knowledge sharing among nations and stakeholders.
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) functions as one such DPG. IATI is a voluntary initiative that brings together a diverse range of actors in international development, including donor governments, multilateral organizations, civil society, and private sector entities to provide forward-looking data to enhance accountability and development planning. IATI is overseen by a Governing Board that provides strategic direction. The Members' Assembly serves as a collaborative platform where all IATI members come together to exchange insights, share best practices, and discuss challenges related to the use of IATI data. The IATI Secretariat supports the initiative by delivering activities. And the IATI Community is the body composed of all users involved with IATI’s substantive work.
IATI oversees eight tools that employ the data collected according to the IATI Standard: the IATI Registry, Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS), d-portal, the IATI Dashboard, IATI Validator, Country Development Finance Data, IATI Datastore, and the API Gateway. These are all rooted in the same IATI dataset, which publishes detailed information on development and humanitarian projects. D-portal serves as the primary gateway for the standard actor in development to access and explore IATI data. The newest tool, the Country Development Finance Data (CDFD) tool, bridges the gap between technical and non-technical users by providing tailored access to aid data aligned with partner countries' national development priorities.
IATI’s tools should serve as components of aid actors’ data-based decision-making (DBDM), a process that adds value to previous approaches by focusing on “when” and “what” actions are most effective. While strategic planning addresses the foundational questions of "what" an organization seeks to achieve and "why" those objectives are important, and results-based management (RBM) focuses on "how" to operationalize these goals through mechanisms and processes, DBDM helps determine the optimal timing and selection of actions to maximize effectiveness.
Central to effective DBDM is the quality of data: the ease with which data can be accessed, understood, and applied by decision-makers to drive meaningful actions. Data quality consists of four dimensions: (a) intrinsic quality, ensuring data is accurate, objective, and credible; (b) contextual relevance, addressing timeliness, completeness, and appropriateness to specific decisions; (c) representational clarity, focusing on interpretability and consistency; (d) accessibility, emphasizing ease of use and security. However, user capacity is equally important, as it determines users’ ability to transform available data into actionable insights.
Four distinct approaches were employed to identify and analyze IATI's data ecosystem, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation from multiple perspectives. These methodologies included reviews of published documentation, technical analysis of data architecture, stakeholder interviews, and scenario walkthroughs, each providing unique insights into IATI for DBDM.
While credibility and objectiveness are strengths of IATI’s system, intrinsic quality remains a critical area for evaluation. IATI offers a Validator to ensure that submissions adhere to the Standard, but use of the Validator is voluntary and is not always used. Accuracy is also challenged by the lack of mechanisms to validate whether input values accurately reflect the financial realities of aid delivery. Another weakness in IATI’s data accuracy is the lack of unique identifiers for distinguishing individual data entries.
Contextual relevance has improved by incorporating member demands on the code lists that define the IATI Standard. However, not all publishers comply with guidelines designed to ensure timeliness through frequent, regular updates. Completeness remains the biggest challenge. Publishers frequently fail to populate required fields, resulting in data gaps in critical areas such as project timelines, funding breakdowns, and geographic coverage. Additionally, limitations in the database schema introduce structural inefficiencies that hinder data integration and management. There are also performance issues with external projects, such as SQL queries.
Representational clarity is critical for a global standard like IATI. It is characterized by interpretability and consistency and addresses how effectively data is organized, presented, and structured to ensure it can be easily understood and consistently interpreted by users. The IATI Standard promotes consistency across datasets by defining how development data should be reported, structured, and formatted, making it easier for users to compare and aggregate data from different publishers. However, the absence of standardized attribute constraints affects how clearly and consistently data is presented. Additionally, fragmentation and overlap of IATI’s multiple tools hinder the ability of users to efficiently locate and utilize the data they need and introduces data inconsistencies across platforms.
Accessibility determines how effectively users can engage with and leverage data for decision-making. Although data security is a key component of accessibility, IATI’s central commitment to transparency as a digital public good effectively eliminates this concern. IATI works best when it is used for confirming facts, especially when searching for reference projects, identifying potential collaboration partners, and obtaining the aid profile of a specific organization. However, there are a number of issues with d-portal, the primary user interface: trends cannot be viewed both in time and across regions; selections cannot be easily scaled up or down; aid flows to a single country are difficult to distinguish from flows to multiple countries; and d-portal lacks a number of visualization tools.
IATI has made significant progress in fostering user capacity. User capacity encompasses the skills, tools, and organizational culture required for users to effectively leverage data for decision-making. This effort has benefitted from the UN system’s broader organizational shift toward embracing DBDM. However, user capacity varies greatly across the system.
Many of IATI’s challenges are rooted in the intrinsic nature of its voluntary framework, which leads to significant disparities in reporting quality among publishers. While IATI’s adaptability has allowed it to evolve in response to emerging needs, this approach has also introduced fragmentation, such as inconsistencies across tools, schema changes, and a lack of backward compatibility. However, the steady improvement in data quality has positioned IATI as a vital DPG in coming decades.
Interested parties can download the two reports here:
Development Futures Lab (KU DFL), led by Professor Cuz
Potter and affiliated with Korea University’s Global Research
Institute, has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to improve the digital
public goods (DPGs) that play a vital role in enabling
international development collaboration. Actors, from donors
and journalists to government and NGOS, depend on DPGs, such
as the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)
database, to understand flows of ODA and guide their
decision-making.
Despite being a critical link in the international
development information ecosystem, a deeper look reveals
shortcomings in the accessibility, accuracy, and quality of
DPGs. In partnership with the United Nations Seoul Policy
Centre (USPC), KU DFL will evaluate the shortcomings, and
strengths, of these systems and deliver policy and
technological solutions to unlock their potential–fostering a
future of data-driven development to the benefit of all
stakeholders.
The Development Futures Lab (KU DFL), a newly formed research lab located in the Global Research Institute of Korea University's Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), proudly announces its official launch.
Why We Are Here: A Future Forward Vision for
Development
The world is undergoing rapid and profound transformations in
the global economy, geopolitical relations, technological
advancement, and the health of the environment. These
transformations present great challenges, yet are also rich
with great opportunities. At the heart of KU DFL is the
belief that as the world evolves, the next evolution in
development initiatives awaits us, too. Development
initiatives that are not just effective but
transformative.
How We Make a Difference: Our Approach
Transformative global development outcomes in this era of
change demand new approaches and new insights. Leveraging
research talent and its positioning in a world-leading
institution of higher education, KU DFL harnesses digital
public goods and emerging technologies to envision, evaluate,
and engender future development. Our insights and expertise
empower decision-makers to make impactful development
outcomes.
Who We Are: A New Hub for Development
Research
Under the leadership of Professor Potter and comprising of a
team of dedicated graduate researchers, KU DFL strives to
conduct research at the frontier of development and
innovation. Already, KU DFL is tackling development
initiatives in partnership with the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre,
and further research projects are expected in the future. The
Development Futures Lab invites all interested parties,
scholars, students, and stakeholders, to learn more about our
work and follow us at https://www.cuzproduces.com/dflab.