The Aid Activity data come from donors, including the 22 member countries of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the European Commission and other international organisations. The statistics are compiled according to internationally agreed definitions and classifications.  Data collection, processing and quality control is carried out by the DAC Secretariat.

The database covers DAC donors' bilateral aid (including projects executed by non-governmental organisations and multilateral institutions on behalf of the donor), and projects by the World Bank, the regional development banks and some UN agencies.  It excludes private grants and aid from non-DAC bilateral donors.

The comprehensiveness of donors' reporting on aid activities is assessed each year.  This assessment clarifies the extent to which the data can be used in analytical work and compared across countries.

Users can retrieve aid activity data in ready-made charts and tables or create their own statistics by querying the online database (IDS/o) .  They can select data by year, purpose, recipient and/or donor.  Results can be presented at the level of individual projects or in table form.