ReasonBook
Open source · grant fraud prevention
We built it. Now we're giving it back.
The decision-governance engine behind Decision Pipelines for Government™ is now open source — a neutral, verifiable baseline for grant fraud prevention that any agency, auditor, or developer can inspect, run, and improve.
Originated at DataVisuals. Now a community project.
Why open source
Why we're giving it back.
The debate over government fraud is stuck between two bad answers.
Burn the programs down, or look the other way. One side would dismantle aid on the assumption government can't run it honestly; the other treats theft as an acceptable cost of moving money quickly. Neither extreme protects the taxpayer or the eligible citizen.
Open source is the way out. When the screening rules are public, anyone — a developer, an auditor, an inspector general — can read the code and confirm they're fair, unbiased, and compliant with civil liberties. That is a neutral baseline no vendor's black box can offer.
True equity cannot exist without strict accountability. Every dollar stolen by a fraud ring is a dollar denied to someone who truly needs it.
The approach
Detection recovers. Governance prevents.
Most fraud programs fund only the recovery half — and pay the reputational cost of every loss before clawing back a fraction of the dollar. ReasonBook closes the prevention half: every award decision owned and on the record before the money moves.
Prevention · ReasonBook
Govern the decision in flight.
Every funding decision carries a named owner, a structured rationale, and the evidence it rests on — captured before disbursement, defensible after.
The gap
Detection alone starts after the loss.
Recovery is slow, partial, and the reputational damage lands first. By the time fraud is found, the dollar has already moved.
Recovery · Fraud detection
Claw back what was paid.
Essential, but reactive. Post-award detection finds patterns and recovers funds once the money is already gone.
You need both halves. Most programs only fund one.
What it does
Govern the award before the money moves.
ReasonBook sits at the award decision and stays on the record through disbursement and audit.
Decide before disbursement.
Stop improper payments at the flight path — not through post-payment recovery, which only finds what has already left the building.
Every decision on the record.
Owner, rationale, and evidence captured the moment the call is made, and preserved for the next IG or GAO review.
Risk signals, surfaced quietly.
Duplicate identities, excluded parties, and mismatched entities raise as signals for an owned decision — honest applicants never feel it.
No black box.
The code is fully open. Anyone can read the algorithms and confirm the screening is fair and unbiased.
The record
Five steps. Every award.
Every grant and entitlement decision becomes structured data — exportable on demand for IG review, audit reconstruction, or program reporting.
-
Signal
An application, renewal, or risk flag enters the queue with its evidence attached.
-
Owner
A named program officer takes the decision — on the record, at the moment it is made.
-
Decision
Award, deny, hold, or renew — with the rationale and the evidence it rests on.
-
Action
Disbursement, denial, or escalation executes against the recorded decision.
-
Outcome
The result tracks back to the decision that produced it. Override quality is measurable, not assumed.
Who it's for
One baseline, every side of the aisle.
Open-source accountability answers the valid concerns of both sides at the same time.
Fiscal conservatives
Rigorous stewardship.
Automated, continuous auditing that aggressively roots out bad actors — without requiring massive, expensive new government bureaucracies.
Social progressives
Aid without the hoops.
Anomalies flag passively in the background, so honest applicants receive assistance quickly instead of a degrading paperwork maze.
Technologists & policymakers
Nothing hidden.
Fully transparent code any developer, auditor, or official can inspect to ensure the rules are fair, unbiased, and compliant with civil liberties.
Get involved
Inspect it. Run it. Make it better.
ReasonBook is community-driven. Technologists, policymakers, and civic-integrity advocates are invited to inspect, contribute to, and deploy the codebase.