Linked Data for the International Aid Transparency Initiative

It is widely recognized that the effectiveness of aid can be improved by providing transparent insight into aid activities. The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), a multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid, has developed an open standard for the publication of aid information. As of 2013, over 150 donors, NGOs and governments have registered to the IATI registry by publishing their aid activities in this XML standard. Taking the IATI model as an input, we have created a Linked Data model based on requirements elicitated from qualitative interviews using an iterative requirements engineering methodology. We have converted the IATI open data from a central registry to Linked Data and linked it to various other datasets such as World Bank indicators and DBpedia information. This dataset is made available for re-use at http://​semanticweb.​cs.​vu.​nl/​iati/​. To demonstrate the added value of this Linked Data approach, we have created several applications which combine the information from the IATI dataset and the datasets it was linked to. As a result, we have shown that creating Linked Data for the IATI dataset and linking it to other datasets give new valuable insights in aid transparency. Based on actual information needs of IATI users, we were able to show that linking IATI data adds significant value to the data and enables fulfilling the needs of IATI users.