Robust accountability requires the public to have meaningful access to information about government borrowing terms. Thus, all material information about sovereign borrowing and lending should be presumptively public, accessible, and intelligible to everyone.

Access the PublicDebtIsPublic Platform

Our Mission

#PublicDebtIsPublic is a collaboration between the Sovereign Debt Forum [link] and the Massive Data Institute [link], rooted in our shared belief that public debt must be robustly accountable to the public. 

The pandemic and a string of ‘hidden debt’ revelations in vulnerable countries have made debt transparency a priority for many policy makers and market participants around the world. They have begun to report more, and more granular, economic and financial data.

#PublicDebtIsPublic is more ambitious. As lawyers and as data scientists, we know that reported numbers stand for words: underlying commitments expressed in debt contracts, laws, and regulations. We also know that public access to legal and financial terms is necessary, but not sufficient, to make government commitments meaningful to the public. We recognize that full-text contracts and legal frameworks for government borrowing can be voluminous and complex. Making them intelligible will take a broad-based effort, with input from many different kinds of stakeholders around the world. 

#PublicDebtIsPublic contributes to this effort by creating the first centrally-collated web-based sovereign debt documentation and data commons, using materials already in the public domain. 

It is a building block in an accountability ecosystem. Our goal is to shift debt information norms and practices, firmly establishing a presumption in favor of meaningful public access to the legal and financial terms of public debt.

The pilot version of #PublicDebtIsPublic comprises 114 documents for 20 borrowing governments in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and South America, selected to ensure representation across the national income spectrum, geographic region, and debt profiles. The pilot platform also includes a broad range of official and commercial debt instruments.  We have collected an additional 600 documents that will be incorporated in the coming months. We have limited pilot phase collection to capital market instruments and loan agreements entered into from 2015 to the present, representing liabilities of central governments. At scale, the documentation bank will comprise a full range of debt instruments entered into after 1970, representing direct and contingent liabilities of all central governments in the world.

What does Debt Transparency mean to us?

In 2025, scores of policy makers and market participants have endorsed debt transparency. It is a rare point of consensus in a riven world. Yet debt transparency means different things to different people. To us, it means:

• Accessibility: The public can find the full terms of material government borrowing, presumptively in the form of full-text debt contracts.
• Intelligibility: The terms of any material government borrowing are made meaningful to the public.
• Accountability: Borrowers and creditors are held accountable to the public for missing, incomplete, or inaccurate information about material government borrowing.

Accessibility on Our Platform

“Accessible” contracts mean that the documents hosted on our centralized platform are free and easy to find. Accessibility is critical because, even when contracts are published online, they are often extremely difficult to find for those without regional or even country-specific expertise. Debt disclosure is a function of diverse national legal frameworks. The resulting disclosure is fragmented and often inconsistent. Our team has found debt contracts, records and descriptions of debt contracts, and references to related documentation on foreign ministry, finance ministry, justice ministry, parliamentary, and financial regulatory websites. They are presented on different schedules and in different formats. National legal differences are understandable. Public debt disclosure must be effective first and foremost in reaching the citizens whose efforts are pledged to repay the debt. We do not advocate for uniform disclosure standards tailored to the needs of foreign creditors. Our platform can help fill the gap with standardized, comparable presentation.

Intelligibility

Transparency can easily turn into obfuscation with information overload, over-simplification, or over-complication. #PublicDebtIsPublic addresses this challenge with a carefully curated set of basic building block features: clause explainers, links to capacity-building materials, search and comparison functions.  We cultivate partnerships with civil society, academic, and industry experts with insights into the needs of diverse public debt stakeholders. We are committed to expanding this network of partnerships and continuously soliciting feedback as we develop and scale the platform.

Accountability

We contend that one cannot understand the “impact” or “effect” of a loan unless one has read the contract. This is because “standard” terms are not actually standard, and the heterogeneity in legal terms mean that no one can understand the implications of a loan unless they have seen the specific terms and conditions that govern the loan.