Towards Verifiable Systems A New Standard for Development Sector Tech
Published on: Mon Jan 20 2025 by Ivar Strand
Towards “Verifiable Systems”: A New Standard for Development Sector Tech
Throughout this series, we have examined the central challenge of modern financial oversight: our reliance on “black box” technologies to manage funds in complex environments. We have detailed the methods required for rigorous, independent monitoring to provide assurance over these opaque systems.
This ex-post verification is essential, but it is also inefficient. It accepts that systems are inherently opaque and then expends significant resources trying to pry them open. It is a reactive posture. The international development and aid community is now mature enough to adopt a more proactive and efficient approach. We must move toward a new industry standard for the technology we procure and deploy. We call this standard “Verifiability by Design.”
From Reactive Audit to Proactive Design
The current approach to technology assurance in the development sector is an inconsistent patchwork. The burden of proof lies with the auditor or monitoring agent, who must find ways to extract data from systems that were often not built with external scrutiny in mind. This is a fundamentally inefficient model that places an undue burden on oversight functions.
We should not have to spend our resources attempting to decode black boxes. Instead, we should demand systems that are designed from the ground up to be transparent. The responsibility should be on the tool, not just the auditor, to provide the basis for trust.
Defining the “Verifiable System” Standard
A “Verifiable System” is one that is architected to facilitate straightforward, rigorous, and efficient independent oversight. At Abyrint, we believe any financial management technology used in the aid sector should be evaluated against this standard. Its core attributes are as follows:
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Exposed and Readable Configuration. All critical business rules—such as payment approval thresholds, workflow hierarchies, and compliance checks—must be stored in human-readable configuration tables. They must not be hardcoded into the software’s source code, ensuring that an auditor can easily review and validate the control environment without being a programmer.
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A Forensically Sound Audit Trail. The system must provide a complete, immutable, and easily exportable audit trail by default. This log must meet the professional standards required for a forensic investigation, capturing the “who, what (before and after values), and when” for every material change to the data.
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A Dedicated Monitoring API. The system must include a secure and well-documented Application Programming Interface (API) built specifically for monitoring and audit purposes. This allows for the direct, automated, and independent extraction of transactional data, bypassing the system’s own potentially flawed user interface and reporting modules.
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Transparent Algorithmic Logic. For any critical automated decision-making function, such as fraud detection or beneficiary risk scoring, the vendor must provide clear documentation of the algorithm’s logic, assumptions, and limitations. For nascent AI/ML systems, this would mean a firm commitment to the principles of Explainable AI (XAI).
A Call to Action for the Sector
This is not just a technical wish list; it is a call for a shift in how the sector procures and governs its technology.
- Donors have the market influence to drive this change. They should begin to integrate these principles of “verifiability” into their funding agreements and due diligence requirements for implementing partners.
- Implementing Agencies must, in turn, make verifiability a key criterion in their technology selection process. They should demand these features from software vendors, recognizing that a lower upfront cost for a less transparent system often leads to far higher long-term costs in auditing and assurance.
For too long, we have accepted the technology we are given and shouldered the burden of verifying it. It is time to demand technology that is built for the high standards of accountability our work requires. Adopting a standard of Verifiable Systems is the necessary evolution for our sector, ensuring that technology is a true and reliable enabler of stakeholder trust.
