Where Did the Money Go? A Public-Funds Transparency Tracker

How real tracking mechanisms work

• Open budget portals publish allocations and actual disbursements per ministry and program (e.g., national treasury dashboards), so citizens can compare promised vs. delivered.
• Procurement disclosure — publishing tenders, winning bidders, and contract prices — makes inflated contracts visible. Open-contracting data standards exist for exactly this.
• Beneficiary lists name who received grants, pensions, or subsidies, letting communities spot "ghost" beneficiaries.
• Social audits — public meetings where villagers verify records against reality (pioneered at scale by India's MGNREGA employment scheme) — close the last-mile gap.

Why the chain leaks — and compounds

Money passes through several hand-offs: treasury → ministry → program office → contractor/beneficiary. If a fraction L leaks at each of n hand-offs, delivery is (1 − L)ⁿ of the budget. At 15% leakage over 3 hand-offs, only 61% arrives. A famous Public Expenditure Tracking Survey in 1990s Uganda found only ~13% of a school capitation grant initially reached schools; after the government began publishing transfers in newspapers, the share reaching schools rose dramatically (general research finding, World Bank / Reinikka & Svensson). Transparency works because every published hand-off creates someone who can notice the gap.

Reading the 3D flow

• Left pillar: the funding source (taxes and grants pooled in the treasury).
• Middle columns: ministries, then program offices.
• Right pillars: beneficiaries — their height scales with money actually delivered.
• Moving dots: disbursement tranches. Red dots falling away are leaked funds.
• Black monolith: appears when the audit trail is off — the point where records stop and scrutiny becomes impossible.

Questions any citizen can ask

• Was the allocation for this program published? Where?
• Do disbursement records match the allocation, month by month?
• Who won the contracts, at what unit prices, versus market rates?
• Can the beneficiary list be verified in person?

All amounts in this simulator are illustrative. Leakage rates, program names, and stage counts are simplified for teaching; real budget chains vary by country and sector.