Trillions of dollars flow from governments and organizations across the globe every single year, and the money can be nearly impossible to accurately track.
A new data platform, however, is trying to make it easier.
The Development Finance Observatory , which launches on Wednesday, gives users the ability to access tons of disparate data sources and make analyses using plain language.
For instance, you might want to compare the debt paid by one country to another over the past 15 years, adjusted for inflation—an analysis that was possible before, but could require significant time and resources.
The project is an initiative from One Data, part of the nonprofit One Campaign , with support from Google.org and the Rockefeller Foundation’s public charity, RF Catalytic Capital. It was built on Google’s Data Commons.
The tool’s real magic, says David McNair, managing director at One Data, is the ability to pull data into it from a host of sources and get an idea of where money is going, and where it may be getting lost in the mix.
“Finance flows are a very fragmented world,” he says, adding that if someone wants to analyze GDP numbers, they may get the data from the International Monetary Fund, but if they want inflation data , they may need to get it from somewhere else.
“The platform standardizes it all in a knowledge graph; you can ask a question and get an answer,” he adds. “If you’re a finance minister, a funder in the U.S., or a journalist, you can find where the money is going quickly.”
‘Only scratching the surface’
The platform’s primary builder, Jorge Rivera, senior director of data and product at One Data, says the project took almost a year to put together, and that “what you see on the site is only scratching the surface.”
Rivera says that more and more data sources will be pulled into the platform in the years ahead. The main goal is to allow users to build on top of it: “We want users to find utility in the infrastructure we’ve built,” he says.
Overall, the data includes 100,000 indicators and more than 90 finance and development datasets, with more to come.
Additionally, One Data is releasing a library of AI agent skills to help navigate and analyze the data and platform. It’s like having an “analyst in your pocket,” Rivera says, and can help speed up data analysis, and, hopefully, allow for better decision-making.
“We’ve taken a process that could’ve taken several people and months of work, and it can now be done in 10 minutes,” he says.
