FiscalTruth Specification

Home / FiscalTruth / FiscalTruth Specification

FiscalTruth

Truth in Every Transaction

FiscalTruth is an open-source, community-driven civic watchdog and whistleblower intelligence platform designed to provide transparent, verifiable access to public financial information across towns, cities, counties, and states throughout the United States.

FiscalTruth aggregates public budgets, expenditures, contracts, grants, procurement records, financial documents, legislative information, and related public records into a unified system that enables citizens, journalists, researchers, auditors, and civic organizations to follow public money from allocation through expenditure.

The system is designed to distinguish documented facts, source data, analytical findings, community-submitted information, and unverified allegations. FiscalTruth is intended to expose financial patterns and potential concerns while preserving provenance, evidence, context, and due process.

Mission

FiscalTruth exists to make public money visible, traceable, verifiable, and accountable.

The platform is designed to provide communities with continuously accessible financial intelligence rather than requiring citizens to search through fragmented government websites, spreadsheets, PDFs, procurement portals, and meeting records.

FiscalTruth is intended to operate at every level of government and to support community-driven oversight while maintaining strong standards for data integrity, privacy, security, attribution, and responsible reporting.

Core Budget Transparency Module

The Core Budget Transparency Module provides comprehensive visibility into government budgets and public expenditures.

Features

State-by-state budget ingestion and normalization
City, county, municipal, and local budget support
Department and agency budget breakdowns
Program-level spending
Fund-level tracking
Line-item budget exploration
Revenue tracking
Expenditure tracking
Revenue versus expenditure analysis
Budget amendments
Supplemental appropriations
Transfers between departments and funds
Encumbrances and obligations
Actual expenditures
Budget versus actual comparisons
Multi-year historical budget tracking
Fiscal-year comparisons
Per-capita spending calculations
Tax revenue tracking
Public debt and borrowing information
Grants and intergovernmental funding
State-to-local funding flows
Federal-to-state funding flows
Drill-down from jurisdiction to department, agency, program, fund, and line item
Searchable public financial records
Source-linked financial records

Public Money Flow Module

The Public Money Flow Module traces financial movement across government entities and funding sources.

Features

Revenue-to-expenditure tracing
Federal-to-state funding flows
State-to-county funding flows
State-to-city funding flows
Interagency transfers
Grant distribution tracking
Subrecipient tracking
Fund transfers
Appropriation-to-expenditure tracing
Contract-to-payment tracing
Vendor payment tracing
Program funding flow visualization
Financial relationship mapping
Funding chain reconstruction
Identification of duplicate or overlapping funding records

Public Records Ingestion Module

The Public Records Ingestion Module collects and normalizes information from publicly available government sources.

Features

Government budget documents
Financial reports
Procurement records
Contract records
Grant records
Payment records
Audit reports
Legislative documents
Appropriation documents
Meeting records
Public notices
Government spreadsheets
Government APIs
Public databases
PDF document ingestion
Structured data ingestion
Document version tracking
Automated source discovery
Scheduled data collection
Source availability monitoring
Data refresh tracking
Failed ingestion detection

Data Normalization Module

The Data Normalization Module converts inconsistent government financial records into standardized datasets.

Features

Government entity normalization
Department normalization
Agency normalization
Vendor normalization
Account classification
Fund classification
Program classification
Fiscal-year normalization
Currency and amount normalization
Date normalization
Category mapping
Duplicate record detection
Record reconciliation
Historical record reconciliation
Cross-source field mapping
Data quality validation
Missing-value detection
Inconsistent-value detection

Data Verification and Trust Module

The Data Verification and Trust Module establishes the provenance and reliability of information displayed throughout FiscalTruth.

Features

Source reliability classification
Source provenance
Original-document references
Source publication dates
Data retrieval dates
Data freshness indicators
Multi-source validation
Cross-source comparison
Budget versus actual validation
Contract versus payment validation
Conflict detection
Duplicate-source detection
Confidence indicators
Verified and unverified data states
Human verification workflows
Verification history
Verification notes
Evidence references
Source availability monitoring

Data Lineage and Provenance Module

The Data Lineage and Provenance Module provides complete traceability from an original source to information presented by the platform.

Features

Source-to-record lineage
Record-to-analysis lineage
Transformation history
Data processing history
Source document relationships
Dataset version relationships
Provenance graphs
Transformation logs
Processing timestamps
Data lineage visualization
Confidence propagation
Evidence chain reconstruction
Reproducible data transformations

Financial Visualization Module

The Financial Visualization Module transforms complex financial information into accessible interactive views.

Features

Budget dashboards
Revenue dashboards
Expenditure dashboards
Interactive charts
Bar charts
Line charts
Area charts
Treemaps
Heatmaps
Flow diagrams
Spending maps
Financial timelines
Department comparisons
Agency comparisons
Vendor comparisons
Per-capita visualizations
Historical trend visualizations
Budget allocation visualizations
Revenue source visualizations
Interactive drill-downs
Accessible data tables
Downloadable visualizations

Geographic Financial Intelligence Module

The Geographic Financial Intelligence Module connects financial information to geographic areas.

Features

State-level maps
County-level maps
Municipal maps
District-level visualization
Geographic spending comparisons
Per-capita geographic analysis
Geographic funding flows
Infrastructure spending maps
Public service funding maps
Geographic anomaly visualization
Location-based contract analysis
Geographic vendor analysis
Regional trend analysis

Contract Intelligence Module

The Contract Intelligence Module provides detailed analysis of government procurement and contracting activity.

Features

Contract ingestion
Contract parsing
Contract search
Contract history
Contract amendments
Contract renewals
Contract expiration tracking
Contract value tracking
Vendor identification
Vendor relationship mapping
Vendor clustering
Vendor ownership information where publicly available
Vendor payment tracking
Vendor concentration analysis
Repeated award detection
Similar-contract comparison
Bid comparison
Competitive procurement analysis
Sole-source procurement identification
Contract threshold monitoring
Contract renewal alerts
Contract anomaly detection
Procurement timeline reconstruction

Vendor Intelligence Module

The Vendor Intelligence Module creates a transparent profile of entities receiving public funds.

Features

Vendor profiles
Vendor payment history
Contract history
Agency relationships
Geographic relationships
Ownership information where publicly available
Related-entity analysis
Vendor clustering
Vendor concentration analysis
Repeated-award analysis
Contract value trends
Payment trends
Vendor risk indicators
Public-source evidence linking
Historical vendor identity resolution

Grants and Funding Module

The Grants and Funding Module tracks public grants from origin through distribution and expenditure.

Features

Grant discovery
Grant awards
Grant recipients
Grant amounts
Grant periods
Grant sources
Grant subrecipients
Grant expenditure tracking
Federal-to-state grant flows
State-to-local grant flows
Grant performance records where available
Grant renewal tracking
Grant expiration tracking
Duplicate funding detection
Grant concentration analysis
Funding chain visualization

AI Analytics and Intelligence Module

The AI Analytics and Intelligence Module identifies patterns and relationships within verified and appropriately labeled datasets.

Features

Spending anomaly detection
Budget spike detection
Unusual payment detection
Historical deviation detection
Contract anomaly detection
Vendor concentration analysis
Duplicate payment detection
Duplicate funding detection
Unusual timing detection
Statistical outlier detection
Cross-jurisdiction pattern detection
Cross-agency pattern detection
Trend detection
Spending pattern classification
Forecasting
Natural language data exploration
Automated financial summaries
AI-generated explanations of detected patterns
Evidence-linked analytical outputs
Confidence indicators
Human review workflows

AI-generated findings must remain distinguishable from source records and verified findings. The system must not present an AI-generated anomaly as proof of fraud, corruption, criminal conduct, or wrongdoing.

AI Investigation Assistant Module

The AI Investigation Assistant provides an evidence-oriented interface for exploring FiscalTruth data.

Features

Natural language financial queries
Conversational dataset exploration
Evidence discovery
Source document retrieval
Anomaly explanation
Historical comparison
Cross-state comparison
Cross-agency comparison
Vendor relationship exploration
Contract relationship exploration
Timeline construction
Evidence summarization
Investigation question generation
Related-record discovery
Citation and source linking
Investigation report assistance

The assistant must distinguish source facts, statistical findings, AI-generated interpretations, user-submitted claims, and verified conclusions.

Timeline Replay Module

The Timeline Replay Module provides an interactive historical view of financial activity.

Features

Budget history replay
Spending history replay
Contract history replay
Vendor relationship replay
Funding flow replay
Department growth and reduction visualization
Agency funding changes
Major financial event timelines
Legislative event overlays
Budget amendment timelines
Contract amendment timelines
Historical anomaly visualization
Before-and-after comparisons

Legal and Policy Mapping Module

The Legal and Policy Mapping Module connects public financial activity with relevant laws, regulations, appropriations, policies, and legislative actions.

Features

Statute references
Regulation references
Appropriation references
Legislative document references
Policy change tracking
Legislative timeline tracking
Required funding comparisons
Actual funding comparisons
Compliance-related data comparisons
Funding requirement mapping
Policy-to-budget relationships
Policy-to-expenditure relationships
Legal source provenance

FiscalTruth must distinguish factual legal references from legal conclusions and must not represent automated analysis as legal advice.

Impact Analysis Module

The Impact Analysis Module provides contextual analysis of changes in public spending.

Features

Funding increase and decrease tracking
Spending redistribution analysis
Program funding changes
Department funding shifts
Service-level data comparisons where available
Infrastructure investment tracking
Education funding tracking
Public safety funding tracking
Healthcare funding tracking
Environmental funding tracking
Economic development funding tracking
Historical outcome comparisons
Geographic impact comparisons
Priority shift detection

Impact relationships must be presented as documented correlations or analytical findings unless supported by sufficient evidence to establish a stronger relationship.

Real-Time Monitoring Module

The Real-Time Monitoring Module continuously monitors supported public sources for changes.

Features

New budget document detection
Budget amendment detection
New contract detection
Contract modification detection
New payment detection
Vendor activity monitoring
Funding change monitoring
Department activity monitoring
Source availability monitoring
Data refresh monitoring
Anomaly monitoring
Change detection
User-configured monitoring rules

Alerting and Notification Module

The Alerting and Notification Module provides configurable notifications based on user-defined conditions and verified system events.

Features

Budget threshold alerts
Contract threshold alerts
Vendor activity alerts
Spending spike alerts
New contract alerts
Contract renewal alerts
Data source update alerts
Dataset conflict alerts
Investigation updates
Whistleblower case updates
Custom monitoring rules
Email notifications
Webhook notifications
Optional supported messaging integrations
Notification preferences
Alert history
Alert suppression controls

Citizen Investigation Module

The Citizen Investigation Module allows communities to organize evidence and investigate public financial questions.

Features

Investigation case creation
Case titles and descriptions
Evidence collection
Source linking
Document attachments
Financial record linking
Contract linking
Vendor linking
Timeline construction
Investigation notes
Collaborative research
Case status tracking
Evidence verification
Review workflows
Public and private case states
Case history
Shareable investigation pages
Exportable case reports

Community Verification Module

The Community Verification Module enables public participation in reviewing data and investigative findings.

Features

Data correction submissions
Source verification requests
Community evidence submissions
Review queues
Contributor reputation
Verification history
Reviewer roles
Journalist and researcher profiles
Expert verification workflows
Dispute workflows
Anti-brigading protections
Abuse prevention
Moderation tools
Public verification status

Community participation must not be treated as proof of wrongdoing. Verification status must reflect documented evidence and defined review criteria.

Whistleblower Protection Module

The Whistleblower Protection Module provides secure mechanisms for submitting sensitive information.

Features

Anonymous submissions
Client-side encryption
End-to-end encrypted submissions
Zero-knowledge submission architecture
Secure document submission
Metadata removal
Secure submission identifiers
Anonymous communication channels
Secure follow-up communication
Optional Tor access
Optional privacy-preserving access methods
Secure evidence storage
Access controls
Submission expiration controls
Time-delayed publication options
Reporter safety guidance
Secure case handoff workflows

The platform must minimize collection of identifying information and must clearly communicate the security limitations of any deployment.

Evidence Management Module

The Evidence Management Module provides structured handling of documents and supporting records.

Features

Secure document storage
Evidence classification
Evidence provenance
Document hashing
File integrity verification
Metadata inspection
Metadata removal workflows
Evidence versioning
Evidence relationships
Source references
Evidence access controls
Evidence review status
Evidence retention policies
Evidence export

Immutable Audit and Data Integrity Module

The Immutable Audit and Data Integrity Module maintains a tamper-evident record of system and dataset changes.

Features

Append-only audit logs
Dataset versioning
Record change history
Source change history
Investigation change history
Evidence access logging
Administrative action logging
Verification history
Cryptographic integrity checks
Dataset snapshots
Historical dataset restoration
Public integrity verification
Tamper-evident records

Federation and Decentralization Module

The Federation and Decentralization Module enables independent communities and organizations to operate compatible FiscalTruth instances.

Features

Mirrorable deployments
Regional deployments
State-level deployments
Municipal deployments
Independent archival nodes
Signed dataset synchronization
Federated data exchange
Dataset replication
Offline archival
Distributed source preservation
Instance verification
Synchronization status monitoring
Conflict resolution
Independent hosting support

Research and Journalism Module

The Research and Journalism Module provides tools for professional investigation and public reporting.

Features

Advanced search
Saved searches
Saved investigations
Dataset exports
Evidence exports
Financial report generation
Investigation report generation
Citation-ready source references
Embeddable charts
Shareable visualizations
Public investigation pages
Historical comparisons
Data filtering
Custom query tools
API access
Research workspaces

Public API Module

The Public API Module provides programmatic access to appropriately published FiscalTruth data.

Features

Budget APIs
Expenditure APIs
Contract APIs
Vendor APIs
Grant APIs
Geographic APIs
Dataset metadata APIs
Provenance APIs
Investigation APIs where appropriate
Search APIs
Filtering
Pagination
Versioned endpoints
Rate limiting
API documentation
Machine-readable responses

Sensitive whistleblower information and restricted evidence must never be exposed through public APIs.

Public Dashboard Module

The Public Dashboard Module provides a citizen-friendly entry point into FiscalTruth.

Features

State dashboards
County dashboards
City dashboards
Agency dashboards
Department dashboards
Vendor dashboards
Contract dashboards
Budget dashboards
Spending dashboards
Funding flow dashboards
Trending anomalies
Recent financial changes
Public investigations
Data quality indicators
Source links
Search
Filtering
Accessibility support

User Workspace Module

The User Workspace Module provides personalized tools for monitoring and research.

Features

Saved searches
Saved dashboards
Saved datasets
Saved investigations
Watchlists
Vendor watchlists
Contract watchlists
Agency watchlists
Jurisdiction watchlists
Custom alerts
Research notes
Investigation bookmarks
Export history
Notification preferences

Safety and Integrity Module

The Safety and Integrity Module establishes safeguards for responsible civic investigation.

Features

Separation of source data and interpretation
Separation of AI findings and verified findings
Non-accusatory anomaly terminology
Evidence requirements
Provenance requirements
Source attribution
Correction workflows
Dispute workflows
Responsible disclosure workflows
Privacy safeguards
Sensitive information controls
Abuse prevention
Defamation-risk reduction controls
Human review requirements for sensitive findings
Clear uncertainty indicators

FiscalTruth must not automatically characterize a person, organization, vendor, agency, or government entity as fraudulent, corrupt, criminal, or otherwise guilty based solely on statistical anomalies or automated analysis.

Accessibility Module

The Accessibility Module ensures that public financial information can be accessed by as many people as possible.

Features

Accessible dashboards
Keyboard navigation
Screen reader support
High-contrast interfaces
Accessible data tables
Text alternatives for visualizations
Accessible charts
Responsive layouts
Plain-language explanations
Downloadable accessible reports
Localization readiness

Transparency and Accountability Module

The Transparency and Accountability Module ensures that FiscalTruth itself remains transparent.

Features

Public methodology documentation
Data source documentation
Data freshness indicators
Analytical methodology documentation
AI methodology documentation
Confidence explanations
Change history
Dataset version history
Public correction records
Moderation transparency
Verification methodology
System status information
Public audit information
Open-source licensing information

Optional Plugin Modules

FiscalTruth should support optional modules that extend the core platform without requiring every deployment to activate every capability.

Optional Government Records Plugin

Additional government record sources
Meeting records
Public notices
Legislative records
Public filings
Administrative records

Optional Campaign Finance Plugin

Campaign contribution records
Campaign expenditure records
Political committee records
Donor aggregation
Vendor relationships
Public-source campaign finance timelines

Optional Lobbying Records Plugin

Lobbyist registrations
Lobbying disclosures
Lobbying expenditures
Government relationship mapping
Legislative activity relationships

Optional Nonprofit Funding Plugin

Public funding received by nonprofit organizations
Grant relationships
Public contract relationships
Financial filing references
Organization relationship mapping

Optional Federal Spending Plugin

Federal awards
Federal contracts
Federal grants
Federal-to-state funding flows
Federal-to-local funding flows

Optional Property and Asset Plugin

Public property records
Government-owned property
Public asset inventories
Property acquisition records
Property disposition records
Public asset transaction history

Optional Procurement Plugin

Bid opportunities
Bid submissions
Award decisions
Procurement timelines
Procurement amendments
Procurement performance records

Optional Outcome Data Plugin

Public service outcomes
Infrastructure outcomes
Education outcomes
Healthcare outcomes
Environmental outcomes
Economic indicators
Outcome-to-spending comparisons

Optional Document Intelligence Plugin

Advanced document extraction
OCR processing
Table extraction
Document classification
Document comparison
Duplicate document detection
Document change detection

Optional Advanced AI Plugin

Advanced investigative reasoning
Cross-dataset semantic search
Entity relationship discovery
Advanced anomaly models
Natural language report generation
Automated research assistance

Optional Secure Whistleblower Plugin

Advanced anonymous submission infrastructure
Secure communication channels
Advanced evidence handling
Secure reporter follow-up
Time-delayed publication
Enhanced privacy controls

Optional Federation Plugin

Cross-instance synchronization
Community data federation
Signed dataset exchange
Distributed archival
Federated search
Instance trust management

Optional Notification Plugin

Additional messaging providers
SMS notifications
Push notifications
Secure messaging integrations
Custom notification providers

Optional Geographic Intelligence Plugin

Advanced geographic analysis
District mapping
Service-area mapping
Infrastructure mapping
Geographic funding relationships
Regional anomaly analysis

Community Governance Module

The Community Governance Module provides mechanisms for maintaining the integrity of the open-source project and its public data ecosystem.

Features

Community contribution workflows
Data correction processes
Documentation contributions
Feature proposals
Issue reporting
Security reporting
Governance documentation
Maintainer responsibilities
Review processes
Contributor recognition
Community moderation
Transparency reporting

Deployment and Administration Module

The Deployment and Administration Module provides controls for organizations and communities operating FiscalTruth instances.

Features

Instance configuration
User management
Role-based access controls
Permission management
Data source configuration
Ingestion scheduling
Alert configuration
Storage management
Audit log administration
Security configuration
Backup management
Dataset management
Federation configuration
Plugin management
System health monitoring

Security Module

The Security Module protects FiscalTruth infrastructure, users, data, investigations, and whistleblowers.

Features

Role-based access controls
Least-privilege permissions
Secure authentication
Multi-factor authentication
Encryption at rest
Encryption in transit
Client-side encryption where appropriate
Secure key management
Session security
Rate limiting
Abuse prevention
Security logging
Security alerts
Vulnerability reporting
Dependency monitoring
Security audit support
Secure backup controls

Data Quality Module

The Data Quality Module continuously evaluates the quality and completeness of public financial information.

Features

Completeness checks
Consistency checks
Duplicate detection
Missing-data detection
Source conflict detection
Outlier detection
Schema validation
Data freshness monitoring
Broken-source detection
Parsing error detection
Reconciliation workflows
Data quality indicators
Public data quality reporting

Reporting Module

The Reporting Module generates structured reports from FiscalTruth datasets and investigations.

Features

Budget reports
Spending reports
Contract reports
Vendor reports
Grant reports
Anomaly reports
Investigation reports
Historical reports
Geographic reports
Data quality reports
Source reports
Evidence reports
Custom report generation
Exportable reports

Specification Branding License (SBL)

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/fiscaltruth/

License & Notice Requirements

FiscalTruth is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

By contributing to this 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.
FiscalTruth 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 – FiscalTruth

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 – April 10, 2026
Created the FiscalTruth repository and defined the foundational architecture for an open-source civic watchdog platform enabling state-level budget transparency, anomaly detection, and whistleblower reporting.
[Add other contributors here] – [Date]
[Describe contribution in one sentence]

License – FiscalTruth

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, and derivative works or 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.