Use activity status rather than dates

[stevieflow]

As part of d-portal reflecting the IATI standard, it would be good to use directly the activity-status field to declare the activity status

Current situation

Right now, we know that d-portal interprets the activity-date to then declare activities as either Active or Ended

This makes logical sense, but it can disguise poor data quality, which is something we want to now to and avoid, by using d-portal directly

Here's one example (@IsabelBirds can supply others) : https://d-portal.org/ctrack.html?reporting_ref=44000#view=act&aid=44000-P127974

Yes, this has actual-end dates, but the status is still implementation

Right now, this appears in lists of Ended activities:

Ideal scenario proposal

We follow the standard directly and group activities by their status:

• 1 Pipeline/identification The activity is being scoped or planned
• 2 Implementation The activity is currently being implemented
• 3 Finalisation Physical activity is complete or the final disbursement has been made, but the activity remains open pending financial sign off or M&E
• 4 Closed Physical activity is complete or the final disbursement has been made.
• 5 Cancelled The activity has been cancelled
• 6 Suspended The activity has been temporarily suspended

I appreciate that is a front-end / layout change ---> but seems more acceptable that us thinking up an grouping mechanism for these status codes, which may in turn disguise things again!

@YohannaLoucheur may be interested in this, given context discussions in #436

[IsabelBirds]

Agreed - this would (I think) also remove the need for the "other activities" and "planned activities" groupings as these would be covered by the status groupings.

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Lack of status also creates a critical schema error, so grouping activities using status would unmask any existing critical errors here.

A couple more older examples here:

• https://d-portal.org/ctrack.html#view=act&aid=NL-KVK-27108436-A-05323-02%3APS
• https://d-portal.org/ctrack.html#view=act&aid=XM-DAC-41302-34140%20-1278%20-2012-ALB102

@stevieflow Do we need any thought around how Cancelled/Suspended activities are displayed? I am aware this can occur due to sensitive reasons.

[stevieflow]

I think "other activities" are data issues --> but as I understand those issues are derived from the dates then it seems they would not be relevant here (but we can surface these issues in other ways, later

Do we need any thought around how Cancelled/Suspended activities are displayed? I am aware this can occur due to sensitive reasons.

It's very easy to access those activities via the filters : https://d-portal.org/ctrack.html?status_code=5%2C6#view=main

I understand the point that explicitly labelling them on screen is more obvious, but the data is published

[YohannaLoucheur]

Agree with your proposal Steven, including keeping the Cancelled and Suspended categories. If the projects are still published, then they should be accessible (if projects are suspended for security reasons, they should be removed from the publisher's file).

We should keep the "Other" category somewhere though - this tends to be a small number of activities with serious data issues (like our 6, with either inverted or missing dates). Seeing this Other category is first intriguing, then a reminder to (try) to resolve the issue.

[xriss]

Other is still going to be a needed category for when an invalid code is used or the code is missing.

We currently have 7389 activities missing status codes and one activity that has decided to use a value of 8.

There is also a question regarding the ending soon or starting soon activity lists, these will need rethinking if you want to focus on the published codes rather than dates.

[stevieflow]

Thanks @YohannaLoucheur @xriss

We currently have 7389 activities missing status codes

I did a quick analysis. Whilst this will no doubt always be the case, a significant proportion of these activities are from a single publisher:

Activities with no activity-status

prefix	reportingorg_ref	reportingorg_narrative	activities	COUNTA of iatiidentifier
aiddata	US-501c3-522318905	AidData	6485	86.20%
france			531	7.06%
	FR-6	France, MAEDI	103	1.37%
wwf-uk	GB-COH-4016725	World Wildlife Fund	266	3.54%
	GB-COH-1081247	WWF-UK	4	0.05%
spark	NL-KVK-41213450	EN: Spark head office Amsterdam	94	1.25%
unrwa	XM-DAC-41130	United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East	28	0.37%
weeffect	SE-ON-802004-1524	We Effect (fd Kooperation Utan Gränser)	2	0.03%
frankwater	GB-CHC-1121273	EN: FRANK Water	2	0.03%
wwf-se	SE-ON-802005-9823	WWF/World Wide Fund for nature	1	0.01%
kad			1	0.01%
irishaid			1	0.01%
fowdk	DK-CVR-78920610	DA: Verdens Skove, EN: Forests of the World, ES: Bosques del Mundo	1	0.01%
cr			1	0.01%
buildafrica			1	0.01%
ai_1064413			1	0.01%
acodev	BE-BCE_KBO-0462279234	FR: ACODEV	1	0.01%
gecfundmanagerpwc	GB-COH-03580586-GEC	Girls' Education Challenge - Fund Manager PwC	0	0.00%
Grand Total			7523	100.00%

Source: IATI Tables (12 April 2024)

It's unclear what the utility of this publication is, so will investigate separately

Nevertheless, the "Other" box remains important. If we are to change the logic to be based on activity-status then I'd propose that Other is for the non-valid use of this code. We can work on surfacing date logic errors and other issues (particularly with closer ties to the IATI Validator) as new issues @YohannaLoucheur

There is also a question regarding the ending soon or starting soon activity lists, these will need rethinking if you want to focus on the published codes rather than dates.

Thanks @xriss - and appreciate this proposal might start to impact on several long-standing things. I can create a new issue on those lists specifically - it might be useful to know the logic that underpins them, too

Thanks

[xriss]

BTW the place where this is a big change is the "active" activities which are about 50% at odds with the published "implementation" status

https://d-portal.org/ctrack.html?status_code=2#view=main

Gives an obvious comparison of the current way vs as published.

[stevieflow]

Wow, nice - thanks for highlighting this @xriss

I still say we proceed!

[stevieflow]

@xriss @notshi

It would be good to resolve this issue.

• Switching to use activity-status for the display would mean changing the layout of the boxes (to accommodation other activity-status

Other is still going to be a needed category for when an invalid code is used or the code is missing.

Agreed

There is also a question regarding the ending soon or starting soon activity lists, these will need rethinking if you want to focus on the published codes rather than dates.

I think we can continue to use activity-date for this. If the boxes with the activity counts have to rejigged, I guess they will not then include any count of "Active activities" or "Ended activities" (as the boxes will reflect the activity-status), so the concept of "Ending soon" will not counter this.

Thanks!

[stevieflow]

Hi @notshi @xriss just wanted to check if we have any progress on this one? Thanks

[notshi]

Here are a couple of test pages for the new status section.

1. https://d-portal.org/ctrack.html?test=1#view=main

This is a mixture of the current view with the 6 activity status at the top.

2. https://d-portal.org/ctrack.html?test=2#view=main

This is a complete rewrite of the status section, displaying the 6 activity status with total, other and reporting orgs.

This might be the most confusing option for 'first contact' with IATI data (to be honest, it confused us!) as the wordings are not intuitive (friendly) when compared to Active, Planned, Ended, etc.

This is also pushing d-portal to more publisher-focused than user-focused, which d-portal was never intended to be in the first place. The latter something we've always pushed for.

[stevieflow]

Great, thanks @notshi

My gut reaction is to continue with option 2, as that is truer to the IATI standard

I do like the layout of the different statuses in the first option, as that looks fairly logical.

However, I think by then displaying activity numbers based on the dates logic continues our pain point - in that it contradicts the statuses

Maybe there is scope whereby we could group statuses into new categories such as "active", but will in turn be an editorial choice we are making. that sits outside of the standard

I think by us using the statuses, and then highlighting to specific publishers cases where their statuses and dates are out of synch, will be a key data quality activity, going forward

I fully appreciate your feedback in terms of the departure towards publishers rather than users however

I'll also speak with @IsabelBirds & @robredpath - and we can discuss

@YohannaLoucheur may also be interested in this

Thanks

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One (minor) think: should the number of Reporting Orgs have a comma separator ?

[notshi]

Thanks, @stevieflow - will add a comma separator to Reporting Orgs.

We were wondering if we changed the wording for the current boxes; ie. Active, Planned, Ended, etc, to something more descriptive and included activity start/ends dates, that might be more useful for both users and publishers.

So instead we have these at the top of the standard statuses.
Activities with dates in 2024 (Active)
Activities with end date before 2024 (Ended)
Activities with start date after 2024 (Planned)

or even this to differentiate the data

[stevieflow]

Thanks @notshi - really interesting

Certainly agree it's a lot of numbers and boxes! But- the designs are starting to cement, I can see

The second iteration is really interesting.

I had assumed that live d-port's use of dates is based on today rather than the year we are in - is that not the case?

[notshi]

Yes, they are based on today but we figured it might be easier to explain and understand with a yearly granularity.

Of course, we will need to adjust the numbers accordingly if we go this route.

[stevieflow]

Just discussed with @IsabelBirds

Important / headline data is :

• Total activities
• Number of reporters
• Total activities in Implementation

For other statuses, might it be possible to have a plain-ole table?

That leaves the activity-date related dates, which might then sit underneath these headlines

For other activities (activities without a date, or a status?) maybe we need to shaded that differently, or something, to indicate this is a data-quality issue?

We appreciate that might start to change how we design visualse this part of an activity. Maybe we can draw some diagrams/sketches or something?