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The article explores the politics of making worlds legible, transparent and actionable through devices that governments and international organisations mobilise in the quest to achieve moral certainty about their activities and decisions. Through an analysis of three distinct examples, we examine the effects of such attempts to open things up in the name of the public good: the performance metrics that are part of the UK government's ‘Transparency Agenda’; ‘conflict mapping’ as part of Kyrgyzstan's internationally sponsored programmes of Preventive Development; and the procedures of Peru's National System of Public Investment (SNIP) through which public investments are regulated. We explore these three as instances of what we call ‘transparency devices’. It is to past moral failures – of wrongdoing, conflict or corruption – that these devices react and consequently it is the anticipation of future moral failings …