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Data trust center

Trust is not a badge.It is a control system.

SAFacts exists to reduce misinformation, not to replace official publishers. Every public value should be traceable to a declared source, freshness-labelled, and blocked from verified/current claims until the checks justify it.

Public label gate

Budget headline

Under verification

Source-attributed to National Treasury, but reconciliation against control totals must pass before any verified label is allowed.

Can say current

No

Can say verified

No

Source known

Yes

Freshness

Review

Official-source first

SAFacts starts with declared public sources such as Stats SA, SAPS, National Treasury, SARB, DBE, DOH, and DFFE.

Source-release tracking

Dataset releases are tracked by period, URL, ingestion mode, and known gaps so freshness is visible instead of assumed.

Persistent lineage

The data layer is being extended so public values can link back to source releases, import batches, raw values, and transformations.

Gated labels

Current and verified labels are blocked unless freshness and verification gates pass. Under-review data stays labelled.

Partner audit readiness

See which datasets are ready, partial, or blocked.

This operational view summarises source-release, lineage, and persisted audit-outcome state for researchers and institutional partners. It is deliberately stricter than a marketing status badge and does not replace the public verified/current gates.

What the labels mean

We show uncertainty instead of smoothing it away.

A source URL is necessary, but it is not enough. Public labels should tell users whether SAFacts knows the value is current, whether it has passed reconciliation, and which claims are blocked.

Verified and current

Allowed only when the value is reconciled and SAFacts knows it matches the latest official period.

Freshness under review

SAFacts can show the source-attributed value, but latest official release discovery is not complete yet.

Under verification

The value is visible with a warning while reconciliation checks or denominator controls are still being completed.

Stale data

SAFacts knows the official source has a newer period than the one currently displayed.

Source attributed

The value is tied to a declared source, but it is not the same as a verified/current label.

What SAFacts can honestly claim

  • Source attribution is required before a public value can be trusted.
  • Freshness is separate from ingestion: latest SAFacts period is not automatically latest official period.
  • Verified labels require reconciliation checks, not just a source URL.
  • Derived metrics must disclose the calculation and upstream source state.
  • Warnings are public-facing, not hidden in pipeline logs.

What we do not claim yet

SAFacts is in beta. Some datasets are source-attributed but not yet fully reconciled, and some source-release discovery is still manual or incomplete. Those gaps are the point of the labels: they make trust visible before production launch.

Official publishers remain authoritative. SAFacts is an accessibility, comparison, and citation layer over those sources.

Why not just ask AI?

Official publishers

Stats SA, SAPS, Treasury and other authorities remain the source of record.

SAFacts

SAFacts makes official data easier to find, compare, cite, visualize and query across domains.

Generic AI tools

Chatbots can summarize, but they may hallucinate, be stale, or omit source-level lineage. SAFacts should be deterministic and citation-bound.