Available through other portals, the World Bank offers access to over 7,000 indicators at its site, along with widgets for displaying the data.
While the World Bank Data website is well done and a step towards “transparency,” it does not address the need for “transparency” in terms financial auditing.
Take for example the Uganda – Financial Sector DPC Project. Admittedly it is only $50M but given it has a forty (40) year term with a ten (10) year grace period, who will be able to say with any certainty what happened to the funds in question?
If there were a mapping between the financial systems that disburse these funds into the financial systems in Uganda, then on whatever basis the information is updated, the World Bank would know and could assure others of the fate of the funds in question.
Granted I am assuming that different institutions and countries have different financial systems and that uniformity of such applications or systems isn’t realistic. It should certainly be possible to setup and maintain mappings between such systems. I suspect that mappings to banks and other financial institutions should be made as well to enable off-site auditing of any and all transactions.
Lest it seem like I am picking on World Bank recipients, I would recommend such mapping/auditing practices for all countries before approval of big ticket items like defense budgets. The fact that an auditing mapping fails in a following year is an indication something was changed for a reason. Once it is understood that changes attract attention and attention uncovers fraud, unexpected maintenance is unlikely to be an issue.