HackCorruption Nepal announces its winners

The team behind Know Your Parliamentarian

The HackCorruption team behind the Support My School idea

Himanshu Panday

HackCorruption is a hybrid Tech4Good event, supported by the U.S. Department of State, that aims to bring people together to co-create anti-corruption solutions

WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES, May 12, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — HackCorruption, a people-powered hackathon to unearth anti-corruption solutions, is proud to announce the winners from the second edition of the event in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Accountability Lab (AL), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and Development Gateway, hosted 52 participants for the innovative Tech4Good event between April 27 and 30. After a competitive judging process, five teams have been named as overall winners with solutions that track public school budgets, enable third-party monitoring of public procurement processes, and combat corruption in land registration by using blockchain to decentralize records. The winning teams include e-PMS, DAAC, Support My School, PAK Zameen and Know Your Parliamentarian (see a full list of the winners below). A diverse pool of participants was drawn from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India.

The hackathon is supported by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) at the U.S. Department of State through the Anti-Corruption Solutions Through Emerging Technologies (ASET) program. ASET advances the U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption and is being undertaken in conjunction with the Summit for Democracy’s second Year of Action.

Cheri-Leigh Erasmus, Global Director of Learning at Accountability Lab, said the hackathon brought together dynamic change-makers from a wide variety of professional and academic backgrounds. “We had the privilege of seeing blockchain experts ideate with gender specialists, anthropologists, civil servants, and activists. This diversity is so evident in the solutions surfaced through the process. Corruption is an intersectional problem, and we believe we can only develop tools that can truly be utilized if a representative group of people contributes to the conceptualization process,” she said.

Kelley Sams, Senior Associate at Development Gateway, said the ideas and innovative spirit evident at HackCorruption Nepal were “clear indicators of the potential for technology to disrupt corruption and foster a more transparent, accountable world”. “The use of advanced technologies and innovative strategies, combined with a deep understanding of the complex cross-cutting factors that lead to corruption, made for an impressive array of solutions. We are excited to see how these ideas, connections, and commitments develop and contribute to making our world more accountable and transparent,” she said. Sams added that Development Gateway was particularly proud of the process it helped support. “By identifying corruption as a key blocker to social well-being, equity, and economic development, the teams involved in this event were able to untangle the factors that shape corruption in different contexts and propose solutions with great potential to create real change.”

Ben Schmidt, Program Officer at CIPE’s Anti-Corruption & Governance Center, said the breadth of technological solutions presented was proof of the deep capacity for innovation and incubation of new solutions in the region. “We heard upbeat discussions about half-century-old regional conflicts and how to resolve them, and there was a lot of shared respect as participants shared their often very unique perspectives on governance and corruption in their countries. Beyond the strong set of winning teams whose solutions were very unique from each other, I think the exchange of ideas and experiences and the bonding within and across teams makes a strong case for why we need more events like this, Schmidt shared.

The winning teams are now eligible for financial support of up to $10,000 to build prototypes of their ideas at a boot camp in Kathmandu in September.

WINNING SOLUTIONS

e-PMS
Tauhidul Islam, Habibullah Mohammad Himel, Rija Shrestha, Sajib Kumar Roy, K.M. Rafiqul Alam, Rifat Rahman

The purpose of e-PMS (e-Procurement Monitoring System) is to establish a monitoring tool for the e-procurement system (E-GP portal) in Bangladesh and Nepal, which would enable 3rd 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.

DAAC
Himanshu Panday

Grounded in Digital Anthropology and using Natural Language Processing and Digital Humanities, DAAC seeks to reimagine corruption data analysis. It will provide a natural language understanding of how corruption is taking place, through citizen reviews, stories, and media articles that are already available online but not aggregated, and will help policy-makers, CSOs, and researchers understand where and how corruption can be curbed.

Support My School
Richa Neupane, Himal Tamang, Manisha Deshar, Samidha Rimal, Sarila Ngakhusi

Support My School will hold schools accountable for infrastructure projects by enabling community members to measure and track the progress of development projects for which public funding is received. As a budget utilization tracking mechanism, Support My School will also gather data and highlight where schools need funding beyond their allotted budget.

PAK Zameen
Mohammad Taha, Daniyal Ahmed Khan, Ifaza Waheed, Muhammad Muneeb Riaz, Shahzadi Faiza

PAK Zameen aims to digitize land records in Pakistan and will combat corruption by eradicating manipulation, duplication, and mutability of land records. Using blockchain to decentralize records and decrease corruption, PAK Zameen will simply land purchases and boost tax revenue by expanding the registered property tax base.

KYP: Know Your Parliamentarian
Sidra Shafi, Surendra Koirala, Kaneez Ayesha Abbasi, Sujan Regmi, Paresh Rawal

KYP aims to aggregate all the data available in the public domain (official government data, from authenticated data reports)and create a profile of individual parliamentarians. In addition to basic demographic, work, and party affiliation information, KYP will also aggregate information on assets and changes in their wealth, past and pending civil and criminal investigations, and their family tree to reveal political and business interests.

Sheena Adams
Accountability Lab
+27 83 411 3161
sheena@accountabilitylab.org
Visit us on social media:
Twitter