Tools and ecosystems that counter corruption and make governance more accessible
Supporting tools and ecosystems that make governance more accessible
What is HackCorruption?
HackCorruption is an Accountability Lab initiative that aims to combat corruption globally by stimulating the innovative use of technology to address accountability gaps and build systemic integrity. With our partners, Development Gateway and the Center for Private Enterprise, we work with diverse stakeholders to develop, track, refine and apply new and existing technological solutions to systemic challenges of corruption. We have found that the largest gaps within this ecosystem are at the meso-level, among smaller and medium-sized businesses, small CSOs and local governments who may not have the resources, in-house skills or pathways to develop technologies that can support them to address anti-corruption issues. They also don’t have the capacity to offset corruption risks.
HackCorruption brings together motivated individuals from the civic tech, CSO, and activist arenas, to build these innovative solutions to combat corruption. The program starts with the selection and orientation of diverse regional teams from the targeted countries. These teams then develop early prototypes of their solutions and pitch them to a panel of judges. The teams with selected solutions participate in a bootcamp and receive $10,000 to support the development and launch of their solution. Through the design, development, and launch of solutions, teams also receive ongoing support and are linked with a network of others working in the same space.
By the Numbers
A Few Winning Tools
ePMS
ePMS is a monitoring tool for the e-procurement system in Bangladesh and Nepal, enabling third-party or civil society monitoring of procurement. The system will flag potential corruption using a series of indicators, such as the frequency of awards to single contractors, reduced time between bidding deadlines and award dates, and dummy bidding, among others.
Keyping
Keyping: Integrated Knowledge for Ethical Procurement is a collaborative and open tool designed to create knowledge graphs from various interconnected data sources. It helps represent complex data in a more readable manner, facilitating insights and connections. A knowledge graph can link individuals, organizations, transactions, and events, fostering the identification of hidden patterns and irregularities.
Caja Publica
Caja Publica is a web application that allows users to access information about beneficial owners or state contracting at the local and national level in Colombia. It offers an optimized search engine, data visualization, data analytics, and customized alerts to ensure that the data is easy for people to find and understand.
Support my School
The Support My School platform tracks financial allocations and education spending from the national level through each level of government to individual schools. It hosts data from spending allocations from national government as well as local government data on actual spending and reports on education outcomes at the school level. It provides data visualizations and creates spaces for engagement.
Process in action
This video explains the ideation process of the iKeep team from HackCorruption Colombia. They are developing a one-stop shop for decoding corruption data in public procurement. The platform is designed for citizens, journalists, researchers, and government decision-makers interested in analyzing information at a national and transnational level for signs of potential corruption and leveraging this analysis for subsequent actions.
Produced by Andrew Benson
Strategic HackCorruption themes
To date, the tools developed through HackCorruption include:
- Procurement monitoring systems that allow citizens to track government procurement and other contracting processes, and flag irregularities that could point to corruption.
- Combining digitization of property ownership documents with blockchain technology to prevent corruption in land sales, and increase government tax revenue;
- Visualizing publicly available data about elected officials and coupling it with family tree and beneficial ownership data to give citizens clarity on their elected officials’ business and family ties;
- Web-based knowledge graphs that illustrate national and transnational procurement data;
- Participatory tools that allow citizens to report on how infrastructure and other development projects are implemented in their area
Problem Statements
01
Budget and Ownership
Transparency
Create ideas that lead to greater budget transparency for government agencies and beneficial ownership transparency in the private sector.
02
Open Contracting & Transparency of Public Procurement
Create solutions to reduce corruption & fraud in the public contracting process by increasing transparency and ensuring proper delivery of essential public goods and services to citizens.
03
Digital Citizenship to Constrain Corruption
Create solutions that increase civic participation to collectively solve problems, such as protecting digital civic space, enabling safe whistleblowing, or monitoring and ensuring the proper delivery of government goods and services.
04
Climate Finance Transparency
Create solutions that increase transparency in government expenditure in relation to climate change and energy transition interventions.
Participants will be encouraged to create tools and approaches to curb the threat of transnational corruption within the scope of any of the 4 problem sets above. Transnational corruption crosses borders, involves global networks, and strips countries of their wealth in a massive transfer of resources from developing to developed countries.
Problem Statements
01
Budget and
Ownership
Transparency
Create ideas that lead to greater budget transparency for government agencies and beneficial ownership transparency in the private sector.
02
Open Contracting
& Transparency of
Public Procurement
Create solutions to reduce corruption & fraud in the public contracting process by increasing transparency and ensuring proper delivery of essential public goods and services to citizens.
03
Digital
Citizenship to Constrain
Corruption
Create solutions that increase civic participation to collectively solve problems, such as protecting digital civic space, enabling safe whistleblowing, or monitoring and ensuring the proper delivery of government goods and services.
04
Create solutions that increase transparency in government expenditure in relation to climate change and energy transition interventions.
Participants will be encouraged to create tools and approaches to curb the threat of transnational corruption within the scope of any of the 4 problem sets above. Transnational corruption crosses borders, involves global networks, and strips countries of their wealth in a massive transfer of resources from developing to developed countries.
What’s Happening
@USAID's CTC Grand Challenge partnered on the @hackcorruption event in #SoutheastAsia, where 3 of the winning teams focused on countering transnational corruption. Read on to learn about their innovations, challenges & plans for the future! @USAIDDRG
Written by Kara Frazier Perlman, Communications and Outreach Manager, Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge for Development In February...
How do you expose #transnational corruption networks? In many regions, tons of data is already available, primed for analysis & aggregation. One of our winning #HackCorruption Balkans teams, Balkan Corruption Insider, is doing just that...
@dgateway @CIPEglobal @MSIWorldwide
Green Funds Transparency is one of the successful #transnational tools emerging from #HackCorruption Balkans to prevent the misuse of funds. The team is one of 5 meeting our mentors in Tirana this weekend for our HackCorruption Bootcamp!
@MSIWorldwide @StateINL @cipe @dgateway
Rounding up our #HackCorruption #Balkans participants is the cohort from #Kosovo. Hackathon problem sets include open #procurement, open budgets, illicit finance and #climate finance transparency. See more: https://bit.ly/3Tw5hRq
@DGateway @CIPE_ACGC @MSIWorldwide @stateinl
Meet our participants from Bosnia & Herzegovina who are beginning to arrive in Tirana, Albania, for HackCorruption #Balkans. They include technologists and activists who will be working in teams on new #tech tools to bring down corruption.
@DGateway @CIPE_ACGC @MSIWorldwide
Next up in our participant announcements for HackCorruption #Balkans is North Macedonia. We're so proud to be working with partners including the @OpenGovHub in #Albania, @StateINL, @USAID, @CIPEglobal and @DGateway by stimulating the innovative use of #tech to fight #corruption.
