Fiscal Digital

Transparency

How we decide to publish, where the data comes from, how you contribute, and how we correct ourselves when we are wrong.

Publication criteria

A finding only becomes a public alert when it crosses two thresholds at once. Findings below either threshold are kept internally for review but not published.

riskScore

≥ 60

Composite risk score computed by the Chief Fiscal from the collected evidence. Considers value, recurrence, and applicable legal basis.

confidence

≥ 0.70

Degree of certainty in the extraction from the official gazette. Below this threshold there is textual ambiguity that warrants human review.

Data sources

Every source used by Fiscal Digital is public and free of charge. We do not buy data, we do not receive leaks, we do not scrape private portals.

Phase 1 — in production

Querido Diário (OKFN Brazil)

Already-indexed municipal official gazettes. Public API access. The backbone of Fiscal Digital: without Querido Diário, the project would not exist.

Federal Revenue Service — CNPJ

Registration status, partners, and incorporation date of companies. Public and free access. Used to identify newly opened suppliers and concentration patterns.

CGU — CEIS and CNEP

National registries of debarred and suspended companies (CEIS) and of punished companies (CNEP). Available as CSV on the dados.gov.br portal. Used to flag suppliers under active sanctions.

Phase 2 — planned

TSE — campaign donations

Cross-referencing campaign donors with subsequent suppliers of the municipality. Under study.

TCE-RS

Findings and audits from the State Audit Court of Rio Grande do Sul. Under study.

Federal Transparency Portal

Federal transfers to the municipality, to contextualize the available budget. Under study.

Correction policy

Being wrong is part of the method. What cannot happen is the error remaining without a public correction. When we identify that an alert was published with a misreading of the document, we open a public issue tagged false-positive in the main repository.

The correction is published on the same channel and with the same reach as the original. We acknowledge the error clearly, remove the original alert, and update the review process to prevent recurrence.

Same channel, same reach, same honesty. Trust is rebuilt by repairing, not by minimizing.

Contribution model

Every relevant technical decision goes through public discussion before merge. There is no private decision channel. The flow is simple and linear:

  1. issue
  2. public discussion
  3. PR
  4. review
  5. merge

A PR that changes Fiscal Agent logic must include three things

  • Legal reference — which law and which article underpins the criterion applied.
  • An example of a real official gazette that triggers the alert.
  • An example that must NOT trigger the alert — to prevent false positives.

All the code lives at github.com/fiscal-digital.