Add a source
Know of public spending records this site does not have? A town that publishes its cheque register, a report of awards, a list of payments. Send the link and a sentence about what it holds.
Home / Help build this
Help build this
NL Ledger is built in the open, and anyone can help make it more accurate and more complete. Most help needs no programming: a link and a sentence is enough.
Four ways in
Each one opens a short form on GitHub, where the site's code and records are kept. A free GitHub account is needed to send it.
Challenge a method
Think something is counted, flagged or worded the wrong way? Say what the site does, what you would do instead, and why. Every method is written down on the Methods page, so there is something concrete to argue with.
Report a figure
Found a figure that does not match the document it links to? Give the page on this site and the page in the source. Confirmed errors are fixed and logged on the Corrections page.
Request data
Want records that are not published anywhere? Describe them and who holds them. A good request can become an access to information request, and the answer can be added here.
Sources waiting for someone
Some sources are known but not yet loaded: MERX award results, more town payment registers, NL Health Services, Memorial University, the lobbyist registry, political contributions and others. Each has its own page on GitHub with what is known so far. See the list
What makes a contribution useful
- A link to the source for every figure.
- Where the source prints a total, the parsed lines add up to it.
- Plain, neutral wording. The site says what the records say and does not accuse anyone.
Every suggestion is read and every change is reviewed before it goes on the site. A suggestion that needs more work stays open with a note on what would settle it.
For programmers
The code is open source under the MIT licence. It fetches each source, reads it, checks it against the source's own totals and builds this site. To run the whole site on a laptop with a small sample of the records, with no accounts, only Node 22.13 or newer is needed:
git clone https://github.com/nlledger/nl-ledger.git && cd nl-ledger && ./dev.shThen open localhost:8787. The README and the contributing guide say what is where.
Starter issues
Each says what to do, where in the code and how to tell it is done. The first two need no code.
- Trace 20 random records back to their source documents (no code)
- Read the Methods pages as a newcomer and rewrite what is unclear (no code)
- The St. John's sample reads one fixed file name (Python)
- Test the personal tax calculation against form NL428 (JavaScript)
- Add a federal grants fixture so counting each agreement once is checked in CI (Python)
- Smoke-test every MCP tool against the sample data in CI (JavaScript)
- Download a search or supplier's records as CSV (JavaScript)
- Run an accessibility check over the built pages and fix what it finds (HTML, CSS)