Public Finance Methodology

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 proved before it is published

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. 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.

• 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.