Data field definitions — Project Browser

Project number

The first seven digits indicate a project, with the last three digits indicating a sub-project number. These CIDA-assigned project numbers also appear in the data sent to the DAC-OECD to report on disbursements.

Date modified

This date stamp indicates the day on which the project profile was published or modified. Modifications may include substantive changes to the data, such as status or budget updates, or cosmetic changes, such as correction of grammar errors in text fields.

Title

The project title as it appears in the Project Browser may not be exactly the same as it appeared in announcements or in the Proactive Disclosure reports. In the case of multi-donor projects, the title represents CIDA's contribution only and is often different from the title used by all donors in the recipient country.

Description

The project description is for communications purposes. It usually describes the ultimate outcome, intermediate outcomes, and activities in plain language. If the project is part of a larger initiative, that initiative is usually described as well. Sometimes the description lists multiple partners; CIDA's information systems allow only one to be coded in the system.

Status

CIDA's projects progress through a life cycle of tentative, planning, operational, terminating, and closed. CIDA only publishes project data after the project has been approved and is in operational status. Projects are usually moved into terminating status once activities have been completed and are changed to closed status once the final report has been accepted. Profiles are normally removed from the Project Browser after they have been posted in closed status for one year. Occasionally they are removed while the project is in terminating status if there has been a prolonged administrative delay in closing the project.

Start-End

The years indicated generally represent the project's official year of approval and its estimated year of completion (acceptance of the final report) respectively. These dates usually differ by several months from the beginning and end of activities on the ground.

Country

This field indicates where the project is carried out. The location may be a country, territory, or region. A project may be carried out in more than one location. If so, the project description indicates an estimated percentage of project activities in each location. CIDA's country pages contain more information on the Agency's activities in each country. Visit Where we work to view these pages.

Executing agency-Partner

The executing agency-partner can be a private firm, a non-governmental organization, an educational institution, an association, an institute, a government department, or any other individual or organization selected by CIDA to implement the project or one of its components. "Information not available" may appear in the Executing agency-partner field when, for example, a project is operational but does not yet have an official executing agency.

Individual partner names may appear more than once in the drop-down list. This is due to errors made in the past in assigning more than one code to the same partner. Although these errors have generally been corrected in CIDA's systems, some of the older projects that used duplicate codes are still published in the Project Browser, accounting for the duplication of the names in the list.

Please note that only one executing agency-partner can be entered in this field in CIDA's information systems; if there are multiple partners in the project, they are usually listed in the description. Consequently, if you are using the executing agency-partner filter to generate a data set, the set will only contain those projects where the vendor chosen is the primary partner entered in this field.

Sector(s) of focus

CIDA-funded projects are categorized under eight broad sector headings: democratic governance, improving health, private sector development, strengthening basic education, environment, emergency assistance, peace and security, and other.

Sector

The sector labels and codes used are tertiary-level DAC sector codes. CIDA's sector coding table for projects is based on the OECD sector code table, allowing all donors to compare and coordinate their projects.

Maximum CIDA contribution

The value indicated in Canadian dollars corresponds to the maximum amount approved by CIDA for the project. When the project moves to closed status, the final amount of the contribution is posted. This value could be less than the maximum amount initially approved.

Note 1: The amount indicated does not automatically correspond to the amount in the contractual agreement with the organization responsible for executing the project because multiple agreements may have been signed for a single project or the amount approved may include monitoring and evaluation components. Also, CIDA's contribution may represent only a portion of the project's total value, especially if other donors, the recipient country, or the Canadian partner invest equity in the project.

Note 2: The amounts listed in the Project Browser data and in the DAC-OECD data for any given year will usually be different. The Project Browser contribution amount reflects a planned, or partially disbursed, multi-year budget in Canadian dollars, as currently entered in CIDA's information systems, whereas the DAC-OECD contribution amount is in US dollars per calendar year, for past years, and includes contributions from other Canadian sources, not just CIDA.

Note 3: The amounts listed in the Project Browser may not always match amounts announced. In some cases, the Project Browser budget data may appear to indicate a lesser amount than that announced because the project has been split into sub-projects, the profiles of which have yet to be published. In other cases, the Project Browser data may appear to indicate an amount greater than that announced because the announcement refers only to new funding added to an existing project or because administrative/evaluation funds have not been included in the announced amount.

Expected Results

The information summarized in this field represents results that are expected to be achieved by the project (primary intermediate expected outcomes and immediate expected outcomes). This field is new: information will only be available for projects approved after October 15, 2011.

Progress and Results Achieved

The information summarized in this field represents highlights of the project's accomplishments. Unless otherwise stated, the results are cumulative and based on the most current reports available. Results are reported for the project as a whole, not just the CIDA contribution.

It is usual for many development projects to have no results to report within the first two years of activities.

Because this field is a new feature, results achieved by most older projects (for example, projects already finished in previous years and now closed) will not be published on the Web at this time.

• Project Browser Data Set
• International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)
• Statistical Report on International Assistance — by Country Spending
• Statistical Report on International Assistance — by Multilateral Organization
• Canada's ODA Statistics — OECD/DAC
• International Development Assistance Commitments
• Historical Project Data Set