InvestmentMap is Now Open Source

The regional InvestmentMap, or “MapaInversiones,” initiative of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was born in Colombia and, over the years, has expanded to 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In that time, it has generated a significant impact on efficiency in public investment, as shown in studies from Costa Rica, Colombia, and other countries.

This achievement, however, brought with it a new challenge: subnational governments manage public investments, too, but they do not always have the technical and budgetary capacities of national governments. Faced with a growing demand, a key question arose: how can we ensure that transparency is truly accessible and promotes digital inclusion? The answer was to turn InvestmentMap into a digital public good.

Now, the platform is open source and available in the IDB’s Code for Development (Code4Dev) catalog, allowing any government – national, provincial, departmental, or municipal – to implement, adapt, and scale it without restrictions. This openness facilitates equitable access to technological solutions, strengthens accountability, and significantly reduces development costs. And, as a digital public good, InvestmentMap is not just a technological tool, but a manifestation of commitment to transparency and equity, enabling more citizens to clearly and simply access information on how public resources are invested.

In addition to lowering adoption barriers, making InvestmentMap open source fosters collaboration between governments and developer communities, creating a multiplier effect: every improvement made by one actor can benefit many others. And so, the software becomes a vehicle for promoting collective innovation in transparency and citizen participation.

In fact, the decision to make InvestmentMap open source is part of a broader strategy to scale its impact. Here are some advantages of this move:

• It facilitates access to technology: governments no longer have to build the solution from scratch.
• It reduces costs and time: financial and technical barriers are eliminated.
• It fosters collaboration: different actors can contribute with continuous improvements.
• It promotes innovation: the platform can be adapted to diverse contexts and needs.

Code transparency is also key to ensuring the sustainability of the InvestmentMap ecosystem. As an open tool, its evolution does not depend on a single institution, but on a committed global community. Each government can customize the platform according to its strategic, regulatory, system-related, and language needs.

How did we achieve this?

This advancement was made possible thanks to the collaboration of multiple actors. In 2024, the IDB organized the TechSprint for Greater Government Transparency, an event that brought together teams from across the region to propose solutions to specific challenges in the InvestmentMap technological ecosystem.

The most important aspect was the event’s approach: opening the process to universities, civil society organizations, and experts from different disciplines so they could explore and experiment with InvestmentMap as a digital public good. The goal was for them to identify practical uses with the potential to be replicated or adapted by governments, promoting a culture of transparency that can grow organically and collaboratively.

This collective effort has made InvestmentMap a more accessible, flexible, and adaptable platform. The IDB has also evolved in how it supports governments, promoting a vision of software as an open-knowledge product, which allows sharing of lessons learned, accelerates innovation, and expands the impact of digital solutions. In line with this vision, the Code4Dev initiative offers 200+ open-source digital tools that are designed to improve public management. All of them can be used for free, modified freely, and integrated into other projects.

Additionally, at the request of countries, the IDB provides technical assistance through multidisciplinary teams – developers, data engineers, UX/UI designers, cybersecurity specialists, public policy analysts, and product managers – who collaborate with national and subnational governments to adapt the platform to specific contexts, develop new features, and integrate it into existing systems.

With standardized processes and methodologies for software development, the IDB transformed its support model for governments in the region, providing concrete tools for more effective, sustainable, and participatory transparency.

Early adopters

Just a few months after the code was made open, the city of Cali, Colombia, used it to develop its own platform, paqueveas.cali.gov.co. The Province of Buenos Aires inArgentina and the city of Bogotá,Colombia, are also in the implementation process.

These cases demonstrate how opening the code facilitates access to proven solutionsand accelerates the digitalization of government transparency. In Cali’s case, the platform allows citizens to access detailed information on the progress of publicly funded projects in sectors such as health, security, infrastructure, sports, culture, and economic development, as well on as the contracts signed for their execution.

¡Pa’ que Veás!, the public-investment monitor of the city of Cali

How can I contact the InvestmentMap team?

If you are part of a national or subnational government and want to implement the platform, you can contact your IDB Country Office, mentioning the InvestmentMap initiative and the authors of this article.

If you are a developer or part of the Code4Dev community, your contribution is key:

1. Explore the code on GitHub.
2. Report bugs or suggest improvements.
3. Develop new features and help make transparency more accessible.

Let’s continue innovating together. Are you in?