Public Decision Accountability
Reviews the data, rules, eligibility systems, and automated processes behind public decisions, and identifies where people are excluded, misclassified, or left without a way to challenge an outcome.
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Data accountability for public decisions
Public decisions increasingly run through data. IIBD makes those systems accountable.
IIBD is an independent Canadian not-for-profit helping communities understand, question, and improve the data systems behind public decisions. We identify where data, algorithms, eligibility rules, and automated processes exclude people — then build practical tools to make those decisions explainable, challengeable, and fair.
How we work
Every public decision runs through the same path.
Every public decision moves through five points where people can be excluded — we work at each one.
01
Data collected
Who is missing?
02
Rules applied
Who is screened out?
03
Systems automated
Who can challenge it?
04
Outcomes measured
Did access improve?
05
Decision corrected
What changed?
Why this matters
These systems can look neutral while producing unequal outcomes.
A form can miss the people most affected; an eligibility rule can quietly screen people out; a report can show activity without showing whether access improved. IIBD works upstream, where these decisions are designed and measured.
About IIBD
An institute built to strengthen accountability.
IIBD is an independent Canadian not-for-profit established to strengthen accountability in the data systems behind public decisions. We combine applied research, community knowledge, systems analysis, and practical tool development, focused on decisions that shape access to public resources, services, and opportunities — particularly where people cannot easily see, understand, or challenge how a decision was made.
IIBD works with community organizations, public institutions, funders, and researchers seeking to understand how data, rules, and automated systems affect access to public resources and opportunities.
Who we work with
Community organizations
Using data without extractive practices.
Funders & government partners
Accountable public decisions and evidence.
Researchers & evaluators
Applied systems research and measurement.
Programs
Three programs, working at the same level.
Each program applies data accountability to a different part of public decision-making — and each is home to focused initiatives.
Community Evidence & Data Capacity
Helps community organizations collect, interpret, and use evidence without reproducing extractive or exclusionary practices.
Explore programsApplied Systems Research
Examines how data systems affect employment, housing, benefits, infrastructure, and services — especially where existing data misses lived experience.
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Active initiative — Pilot phase
Mapping Ontario's Community Data Ecosystem
How does community knowledge become public influence?
Ontario produces extensive community knowledge through service delivery, administrative systems, surveys, consultations, research and lived experience. But that knowledge does not move through public systems equally.
IIBD is tracing how community evidence travels through institutional relationships, funding structures, data infrastructure and public decisions — and where it gains, loses or fails to carry influence.
- 01
Map the ecosystem
Who produces, funds, interprets, and uses community evidence.
- 02
Trace decisions
How evidence moves into funding, policy, and service decisions.
- 03
Identify accountability gaps
Where evidence becomes disconnected from institutional action.
- 04
Build practical tools
Methods that make evidence use and decision pathways visible.
Current pilot
Who Gets Funded?
Tracing community evidence through Ontario grant decisions.
Community organizations are repeatedly asked to prove need, impact, capacity and trust. The systems judging those claims are much harder to see.
This pilot examines how selected Ontario grant programs turn public priorities into eligibility rules, evidence requirements, assessment practices, awards and reporting obligations. It will trace where decisions happen, what knowledge counts, what work is transferred to applicants and whether organizations can understand the result.
Ontario — pilot phase
Ontario has extensive community knowledge. The challenge is ensuring that knowledge can travel, carry influence, and produce accountability.
The first pilot focuses on community grant funding. Primary interviews and comparative scoring have not begun.
Selected evidence
Experience across the practice.
The Housing Investment Gap in Canada's Metros
An interactive map of how core housing need outruns subsidized supply across all 41 census metropolitan areas.
Explore the mapData to Power / Black Community Data Capacity
Capacity-building work supporting Black-mandated organizations to use evidence for funding, planning, and impact.
About the initiativeGlobal Theory-of-Change Synthesis
Translating complex, multi-country program activity into outcomes and accountability.
See evidence
Track record
Applied experience, honestly stated.
Our work has included community evidence, curriculum development, evaluation, strategic planning, data-capacity building, and public-policy analysis across Canada and the Caribbean.
Partner with us
Bring us the decision that needs to change.
You may know a system is causing harm but need help proving where and how. IIBD can help map the decision, build the evidence, create practical tools, and measure what changes.
Contact IIBD