Public Finance Methodology

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How this data should be read

Which source may establish what

The observatory follows a claim-scoped chain of official sources: the National Treasury for budget estimates, the Controller of Budget for exchequer issues and reported implementation, the Auditor-General for audit reports, and the NG-CDF Board for constituency allocations and project registers. An official source is used only for the claim it is authorised to establish. An allocation is never presented as a disbursement, expenditure or completed project.

How a figure is checked before it is published

We fetch each official document ourselves and keep an exact copy of it. A figure is published only if it can be read again from that copy, at the exact place in the document it came from. Several separate automated checks then test that the amount is right, that it belongs to the right place, and that it is up to date. If any check disagrees or cannot decide, the figure is not published. No person has to sign it off.

Technical details

Each public figure must replay deterministically from exact server-fetched source bytes, an admitted source URL and an exact record locator. Fresh, provider-backed adversarial lenses independently check correctness, identity and currency (whether the figure is up to date). Every lens must confirm; an unknown or refutation is retained for diagnosis but withheld. The receipt is internally generated, cryptographically attested and append-only. No human approval ceremony is required.

What AI may not do here

AI may explain the cited record, but it cannot invent a missing amount, turn absence into zero, infer wrongdoing without an audit source, or claim that an outcome was caused by one budget line. Partial source coverage is labelled as a subtotal until the expected official record set is complete.

Claim-scoped source authority

Who may establish what

  • The National Treasury Budget estimates Its Programme-Based Budget Book states what was approved. It does not say what was released or spent.
  • The Controller of Budget Exchequer issues and reported implementation Its implementation reports state what was issued and what institutions reported spending. They are not an audit opinion.
  • The Auditor-General Audit reports We list the reports and link the exact file. We never restate an individual finding, because attributing an audit query to the wrong institution is a serious harm.
  • The NG-CDF Board Constituency allocations and project registers Its record states what was allocated to a constituency. An allocation is never presented as a disbursement, expenditure or completed project.