Financial Transparency Specification

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Financial Transparency

Overview

The Financial Transparency Portfolio Module is an open-source specification for collecting, organizing, analyzing, and monitoring financial disclosure information associated with public officials, candidates, government employees, and other individuals subject to transparency requirements.

The module provides a structured framework for tracking financial interests, stock transactions, real estate ownership, lobbying relationships, wealth changes, and potential conflicts between personal financial activity and official responsibilities.

The system is designed as a transparency and accountability tool. It identifies financial relationships, patterns, anomalies, and areas requiring review. It does not determine criminal conduct, corruption, or legal violations. All findings must remain evidence-based and require appropriate human review.

1. Module Purpose and Scope

The Financial Transparency Module provides a complete operational framework for:

Tracking financial disclosures
Monitoring stock transactions
Recording real estate interests
Identifying lobbying-linked investments
Detecting unusual trade timing patterns
Reviewing wealth growth during public service
Analyzing potential insider advantage patterns
Comparing financial interests against committee assignments
Producing evidence-backed transparency reports

The module supports:

Government transparency organizations
Civic technology platforms
Journalism organizations
Academic researchers
Public accountability systems
Ethics review organizations

2. Core Design Principles

The module must follow these principles:

Evidence First

Every finding must be connected to verifiable sources.

Required evidence includes:

Disclosure documents
Transaction records
Property records
Lobbying filings
Government records
Committee assignments
Legislative activity records

Explainable Analysis

Every detection must explain:

What was detected
Why it was detected
Which data sources were used
How confidence was calculated
What additional review may be required

Human Oversight

The system must not automatically determine:

Corruption
Illegal activity
Ethical violations
Intent

All alerts require human evaluation.

Auditability

All system actions must be logged.

Required logging:

Data imports
Analysis execution
User actions
Report generation
Review decisions
System changes

3. System Architecture

The module consists of the following components:

3.1 Data Ingestion Layer

Responsible for collecting financial transparency data.

Supported sources:

Government ethics disclosures
Candidate financial reports
Stock transaction disclosures
Property ownership databases
Lobbying records
Legislative records
Committee assignments
Public corporate records

Supported ingestion methods:

API connections
CSV imports
XML feeds
Document uploads
PDF extraction
OCR processing
Manual entry

3.2 Data Processing Layer

Responsibilities:

Clean imported data
Normalize financial information
Resolve duplicate entities
Standardize dates
Standardize organizations
Link related records

Processing requirements:

Maintain original source data
Preserve historical versions
Record transformation steps
Maintain data lineage

3.3 Entity Resolution Engine

The entity resolution system connects related information.

Supported entities:

Individuals
Spouses
Dependents
Companies
Investment funds
Properties
Lobbying organizations
Government committees
Legislation
Industries

Capabilities:

Name matching
Ownership relationship mapping
Corporate relationship analysis
Historical relationship tracking
Alias detection

3.4 Analysis Engine

The analysis engine performs:

Disclosure comparison
Financial timeline analysis
Transaction review
Conflict detection
Relationship analysis
Risk scoring

3.5 Reporting Layer

Provides:

Transparency dashboards
Financial timelines
Alert summaries
Evidence reports
Relationship graphs
Review workflows

4. Installation Requirements

Recommended Environment

Minimum requirements:

Linux server environment
PostgreSQL database
Application server
Secure API layer
Web interface
Background processing system

Recommended components:

Database:

PostgreSQL

Backend:

Python-based processing framework

Frontend:

Web dashboard application

Search:

Full-text search engine

Optional:

Graph database for relationship mapping

5. Deployment Requirements

Supported deployment models:

Local Deployment

For:

Researchers
Journalists
Civic organizations

Institutional Deployment

For:

Ethics offices
Universities
Government transparency groups

Public Transparency Deployment

For:

Citizen-facing dashboards
Open data portals
Public accountability systems

6. Data Ingestion Instructions

Required Data Categories

The system should ingest:

Financial Disclosure Data

Includes:

Assets
Liabilities
Income sources
Ownership interests
Transactions
Filing dates

Securities Data

Includes:

Stock purchases
Stock sales
Investment funds
Bonds
Options
Other disclosed financial instruments

Real Estate Data

Includes:

Property ownership
Acquisition dates
Ownership percentage
Property valuation
Related entities

Government Activity Data

Includes:

Office timeline
Committee assignments
Votes
Sponsored legislation
Regulatory responsibilities

Lobbying Data

Includes:

Lobbying organization
Issue areas
Spending information
Legislative targets
Time periods

7. Database Schema Requirements

Person Entity

Required fields:

person_id
name
position
jurisdiction
office_start_date
office_end_date

Disclosure Entity

Required fields:

disclosure_id
person_id
filing_date
reporting_period
disclosure_type
source_reference
verification_status

Asset Entity

Required fields:

asset_id
person_id
asset_type
organization_name
ownership_value_range
acquisition_date
disclosure_date

Transaction Entity

Required fields:

transaction_id
person_id
asset_id
transaction_type
transaction_date
reported_date
value_range
source_reference

Property Entity

Required fields:

property_id
owner_id
location
ownership_percentage
acquisition_date
estimated_value

Lobbying Entity

Required fields:

lobbying_id
organization_id
issue_area
lobbying_date
related_legislation

Committee Assignment Entity

Required fields:

assignment_id
person_id
committee_name
start_date
end_date

8. Entity Relationship Model

Primary relationships:

Person connects to:

Financial disclosures
Assets
Transactions
Properties
Committee assignments
Sponsored legislation
Voting records

Assets connect to:

Companies
Industries
Lobbying activity
Government actions

9. Disclosure Tracking Workflow

Purpose

Track changes in financial disclosures over time.

The system must:

Import new disclosures
Compare historical filings
Detect changes
Record additions and removals
Create review alerts

Disclosure Comparison Process

Steps:

Import disclosure document
Extract financial information
Compare against previous filing
Identify changes
Classify change type
Generate review record

Tracked changes:

New holdings
Sold holdings
Increased ownership
Reduced ownership
New property interests
New income sources

10. Stock Trade Monitoring

Purpose

Monitor disclosed securities activity.

The system tracks:

Purchase transactions
Sale transactions
Investment changes
Transaction timing
Industry exposure

Required analysis:

Transaction frequency
Sector concentration
Relationship to government activity
Timing patterns

11. Trade Timing Anomaly Detection

Purpose

Identify unusual timing relationships between financial activity and government events.

The system compares:

Transaction dates
Legislative events
Committee meetings
Public announcements
Regulatory decisions
Government contracts

Potential indicators:

Transactions shortly before major announcements
Repeated industry-specific trades
Transactions aligned with official responsibilities

All indicators require human review.

12. Real Estate Interest Disclosure Analysis

The system analyzes:

Property ownership
Development interests
Land purchases
Government project relationships
Zoning relationships

Detection examples:

Property ownership near government projects
Property acquisition before public announcements
Changes in property value during office tenure

13. Lobbying-Linked Investment Alerts

The system evaluates relationships between:

Investments
Companies
Lobbying activity
Government responsibilities

Workflow

Identify investment holdings
Identify lobbying organizations
Match issue areas
Compare government responsibilities
Generate transparency alert

14. Wealth Growth During Office Timeline

The module analyzes reported financial growth during public service.

Inputs

Reported assets
Salary information
Investment activity
Property appreciation
Income sources

Outputs

Wealth timeline
Asset changes
Growth patterns
Review indicators

The system must account for:

Market growth
Normal investment behavior
Inherited assets
Previously existing wealth

15. Insider Advantage Pattern Review

The system reviews patterns involving:

Timing
Access
Industry overlap
Official responsibilities
Market events

Possible review indicators:

Frequent trades in assigned industries
Trades before major government actions
Repeated timing patterns

The system must not determine intent.

16. Committee Assignment Comparison

The module compares:

Committee responsibilities
Financial holdings
Legislative activity
Industry exposure

Example Analysis

Committee responsibility:
Energy policy

Financial holding:
Energy company investment

Result:
Potential relationship requiring transparency review.

17. Risk Scoring Methodology

The module may assign transparency review scores.

Suggested factors:

Disclosure changes: 25%
Trade timing: 20%
Committee overlap: 20%
Lobbying relationships: 15%
Wealth changes: 10%
Filing irregularities: 10%

Scores must represent review priority, not accusations.

18. Evidence Verification Requirements

Every alert must contain:

Source document
Source date
Extracted information
Detection method
Confidence score
Reviewer notes

Evidence must be preserved.

19. Human Review Process

Required workflow:

Detection
↓
Evidence validation
↓
Analyst review
↓
Classification
↓
Report publication

Review classifications:

Verified information
Requires additional review
False positive
No issue identified
Monitoring required

20. False Positive Prevention

The system must reduce false positives by:

Using multiple evidence sources
Considering market conditions
Accounting for broad investments
Avoiding assumptions
Providing explanations
Allowing reviewer corrections

Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

Fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant system
Copyleft enforced for network deployments
Required attribution:
- Roxanne Ardary
- https://www.roxanneardary.com/

Optional

Specification Branding License (SBL)
- Attribution-free commercial deployment
- Pricing based on scale, usage, and deployment scope
- https://roxanneardary.com/financial-transparency/

License & Notice Requirements

Financial Transparency Module Specification is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+). By contributing to any Open Arsenal project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.

Please note the following:

All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
Financial Transparency Module specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments. Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update notice.md.
When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.

For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.

Notice – ActionCheck

Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.

Contributors

This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.

Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – March 10, 2026
Created the repository for ActionCheck. Designed the platform to track politicians’ promises, votes, financial activity, and board memberships for public accountability.
Add other contributors here – [Date]
[Describe contribution in one sentence]

License

This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

Key Points

You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
All redistributions, forks, derivative works, and network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.

For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.