Public Works Ledger

The problem

Ministries and departments announce projects with dates: a road opened by March, a hospital wing by year end. Citizens, auditors and the departments' own leaders have no single, sourced view of which dates held. Delays surface late, when they are expensive to fix.

Why it is ignored

Audit reports arrive years after the fact, and project portals show progress, not whether the date that was announced held. A department rarely has an independent record of its own delivery that it can use to improve.

What we record

• The department, the project and the announced date, in the official words
• Every restatement of the date (lineage), kept rather than overwritten
• Completion evidence: official commissioning, gazette notice, audit finding
• On-time rate by department, by project type and by year

Sources and evidence

• Official gazettes, budget documents and parliamentary or assembly answers (grade A)
• Comptroller and auditor reports (grade A)
• Department press releases and official project-monitoring portals (grade B)
• Established news reporting (grade C, never enough on its own for Not met)

Every source is graded by fixed rules, linked, dated and fingerprinted, exactly as on the company record.

How outcomes are decided

The same rules as companies: nothing judged before the deadline, Not met only with positive evidence, and every department can respond to any entry. It records administrative commitments with dates, not election manifestos, and treats every party and government the same way.