In January this year DFID began to publish details of every aid project in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard XML schema. There are now a set of XML downloads referenced from the IATI Registry covering countries, regions and multilateral aid activities, all delivered through a RESTful API, and refreshed every month with up-to-date data. DFID also publish a more human-readable version of this information on the Projects Database on the DFID website.

The Hewlett Foundation are the second organisation to publish in IATI format, and others are following on close behind.

Eating my own dogfood

Owen Barder blogged recently that organisations publishing data should be forced to use that data on their own websites – so that “eating their own dogfood” would drive up quality. As I don’t get the chance to do this at work, I’ve been having a play with the IATI data in my own time. Just for fun, you know.

Here are a few initial prototypes. I will blog implementation details in the next few posts, and include code.

Charting using amCharts

I first saw the amCharts charting tool in ForeignAssistance.gov, the US aid portal. The tool takes XML or CSV data and generate Flash or Javascript charts – pie, column/bar, line, bubble and so on. The tool is very straightforward to set up, and data can be set up using XSL transformation of IATI XML data.

These sort of charts would be useful to:

• get an overview of what a donor is doing in a country
• use as a widget on a site dedicated to aid in that country
• (if aggregated across donors in a country), provide an overview of what activities are considered important
• show past and future aid flows for a country

There are still some challenges – for example aggregating the sectors (health, infrastructure, water) rather than the very granular sectors listed.

See with the charts in action. Use 2-letter ISO codes to look up a country you’re interested in.

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! Pipes is a tool that enables manipulation of internet data feeds using a set of pre-determined tools. This pipe retrieves the country file for, in this case, Uganda (UG), filters for currently active projects, and produces a list of aid activities matching those criteria.

Note: the IATI schema needs to have the XML directive added at the top to enable it to be read by Yahoo! Pipes.

These tools would be useful to:

• aggregate information for a country from different sources (for example through the IATI Registry)
• mashup using connections between aid projects and other indicators
• transform or filter the data without using XSL

Go on, have a play.

WordPress Country View

In the WordHack at last years WordCamp UK, the WordHack team developed a prototype to import aid data into a WordPress custom posts structure. As the WordHack was based on non-IATI XML, I’ve adapted this for IATI data.

In short, openaid.org.uk allows an import of IATI XML data for a particular country into a WordPress instance, creating a new Custom Post from each IATI activity (aid project), and dealing with DFID’s hierarchical project/component structure. The code regularly checks the data source for updates and creates new versions accordingly.

This could be used by a Civil Society Organisation (CSO) in a developing country to:

• aggregate all donor activities for their country,
• allow citizens to add comments on each donor activity using the WordPress commenting capability, and
• keep track of the changing nature of the projects through regular updates.

Here’s the example site with a very few test projects.

Next steps

These are just a few initial ideas and prototypes. Please add your ideas below, or, if you’re really keen, visit the new IATI Support forum and send in your ideas.

Disclosure: Although I work for DFID, these prototypes were developed in my own time and using my own equipment. Yes, I’m a geek.

The WordHack at WordCamp UK in Manchester this year was really exciting. By 4.30 pm on day 2 the team had created a stunning WordPress site that:

• Reads and transforms XML data on DFID aid projects into a format ready for import into WordPress
• Imports the XML into a WordPress Custom Post Type for each DFID aid project, creating new post versions if the source data has changed
• Links comments to the post version, so that someone can view comments in the context of the data at the time
• Displays the data in a clean user interface, focussing on the conversation that people can have around aid projects

User Story
The concept (User Story) of the site is that people (either UK citizens or citizens of developing countries) can view summary details of DFID aid projects, and can start conversations around individual projects. Ultimately, this may be best used for sub-sets of the full 3000-odd projects based around communities of interest, for example by a community within a developing country.

Why WordPress?
The new Custom Post Types in WordPress provide the framework needed to handle more structured data around aid project information. Other core features are the commenting capability, use of categories and tags for classification, and the built-in post versioning system. These would require a significant effort to write from scratch.

Credit to the Team
I was really pleased with what the team achieved, and it builds on work done at the recent Aid Information Challenge. It clearly shows what can be done with government information when the data is provided in a reusable format.

The keys to the success were:

• Shaun Hare‘s organisation was critical. He set up the WordHack wiki page, canvassed for ideas early, and allowed for discussion within the group.
• Getting ideas early really helped, as people could develop the ideas over a couple of weeks, and come to WordHack with a better-formed solution in mind. It also helped to break up the problem into a number of logical components that enabled everyone to do something useful.
• The skill and dedication of the team was phenomenal. Each person chose a different component and delivered something useful, and Chris and Shaun tied it all together on Sunday afternoon.

More details
The technical details of the site are available on the OpenAid project page on the WordCampUK Wiki, and we hope to have a Google Code project set up soon.

Next steps
The next steps are likely to be:

• Add Ajaxy goodness to the front page to allow the most recent conversations to magically appear, Twitter style.
• Make the import plugin generic to allow any XML data to be transformed into the Custom Post Type – possibly by providing a URL for the XML and an XSL transform.
• Create a map based on country data to show where the conversation is happening.
• and many more…

If you are interested in continuing involvement then please follow @openaiduk on Twitter.

Like last year, the main benefit to me was to meet the key people in the UK’s WordPress community (in the flesh rather than just on Twitter). It was great to meet with the key people again (and I was very surprised that lots of people remembered me from last year!).

Here’s what I took away from this year’s WordCamp UK:

WordHack
Efficiently organised by Shaun Hare, this was a fantastic and stimulating experience. I was involved with a team of seven people who developed a completely new WordPress site at openaid.org.uk. This site reads XML data on DFID aid projects, transforms and imports the XML into Custom Post Types in WordPress, with a new theme that presents comments on the aid projects as a live conversation, and ties the comments to the post versions. Read more on the OpenAid project page. Brilliant going for half a dozen people in around 6 hours, and shows the real value of exposing government data for others to reuse.

BuddyPress
Paul Gibbs gave a great introduction to BuddyPress. This is a plugin for WordPress that adds social media and community features (extended profiles, friend relationships, groups, forums and activity streams). It looks relatively straightforward to set up, although there needs to be some tinkering around with existing themes. The most impressive example Paul gave was CycleOregon, which doesn’t look at all like a membership-driven site. I have two immediate uses for BuddyPress, both with an international dimension, and Paul’s talk was a great and timely introduction.

Theme frameworks and theme clubs
Theme development was a recurring (ahem) theme this year, but this time it was focussed on the growth of theme frameworks and theme clubs. Kimb Jones gave a good run-down of the theme club and commercial theme market, and this was followed by a launch of the private beta test for WonderFlux theme framework. This is an area where I need to learn more.

WordPress for the voluntary sector
There is a strong community of WordPress developers working with charities and other organisations in the voluntary sector, providing some innovative solutions. Jason King spoke about some of the opportunities and challenges. One observation was that small organisations use a lot of (commonly cloud-based) apps, and this can be challenging to integrate with, for example, a WordPress membership list. This group has a lot of relevance for my WordPress work.

WordPress in the Enterprise
This was another strong theme, as larger organisations are starting to see the benefit of using WordPress. Dave Coveney discussed outward-facing sites in Big Media and larger Enterprises, but there was no formal discussion about the use of WordPress as a social intranet within organisations (idea for a session next year?). We informally discussed some of the challenges of using WordPress within larger enterprises (of which more in a later blog post).

Will there be a WordCamp UK 2011?
The weekend proved that the WordCamp UK organisation is strong and vibrant.

Unfortunately the conference ended on a downbeat note, when Jane Wells from Automattic casually mentioned that the WordCamp.org organisation would prefer to see city-based WordCamps rather than larger events at a national level, following the practice in the US (although not, interestingly, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden and others). I’m sure Jane didn’t intend to cause the resulting uproar!

Moving to a city-based model could be positive if it fosters a strong local community and those local WordCamps were able to attract experienced speakers from across the UK. But personally I value the broad cross-section of people at a UK-wide WordCamp and would like to see it continue.

I’d prefer to see WordCamp UK continue as a travelling circus, working alongside local WordPress communities to put on this exceptional event in different cities each year, while strong local groups also put on more local or regional events as appropriate. I’ve been trying to make contact with WordPress community in Scotland but there doesn’t appear to be a groundswell of opinion for even a Scotland-based WordPress User Group (if I’m wrong, please do get in touch!).

My most embarrassing moment, caught on camera
At 1100 on Saturday, I was comfortably sat in Room 1 settling in to listen to Jonny on theme frameworks, when I saw a tweet wondering why I wasn’t in Room 2. A minute or so later Gurbir walked through and informed me that I was meant to be running a session on Managing Multiple Instances of WordPress! This was an idea I’d had about 6 months ago, had proposed it on the wiki and had completely forgotten about it. Unfortunately, Mike Nolan was there with his iPhone, capturing my just-in-time session planning on Flickr!

Finally, a big Thanks!
Finally, a big thanks to Chi-Chi Ekweozor, Tony Scott and the other organisers. It was a really successful weekend, and shows that WordCamp UK organisation is strong and vibrant. It will be good to mature further into an organisation that mentors people with different skills and outlooks, and encourages local WordPress communities.