Technologies that seek to provide greater visibility to the activities of governments, corporations, or individuals in power and allow others to monitor them.
Suggested reading:
Technology is not a quick fix solution for corruption, by Melissa Tsungai Zisengwe. She writes from a South African perspective but the takeaways are broadly applicable to the whole genre of anti-corruption tech. (2020)
Which Promises Actually Matter? Election Pledge Centrality and Promissory Representation is a published research paper that finds that simply evaluating elected officials on the fulfillment of every miscellaneous promise made while campaigning isn’t helpful, because voters weigh certain promises as more central to the campaign than others. The authors suggest weighting promise centrality when evaluating the campaign’s fidelity. By Jonathan Mellon, Christopher Prosser, Jordan Urban, and Adam Feldman. (2018)
An open project that uses data science - the same technologies used by giants like Google, Facebook and Netflix - for the purpose of monitoring public spending and sharing information in a way accessible to everyone.
Vote Smart, 1153 24th Street, Des Moines, IA 50311, USA
Vote Smart provides free, unbiased, in-depth information about current officials, candidates, issues, legislation, and voting. Non-partisan and nonprofit since 1988.
Center For Responsive Politics, L Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
We pursue our mission largely through our award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, which is the most comprehensive resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. And for other organizations and news media, the Center's exclusive data powers their online features tracking money in politics - counting cash to make change. Our OpenSecrets Blog features newsbreaking original reporting about money-in-politics, including the sort of investigative work that won the Society of Professional Journalists' 2013 award for Public Service in Online Journalism.
An artificial intelligence bot that analyzes Brazilian congresspeople expenses while they are in office. Rosie can find suspicious spendings and engage citizens in the discussion about these findings.
“Marsad Baladia” , or the Municipality Observatory, was launched in January 2014, aiming to monitor municipal activity through access to information, and to present it in a clear and updated manner. The project also aims to strengthen the link between the municipality and citizens,
“Majlesnama” is the first Parliamentary monitoring organization in Islamic Republic of Iran which helps to promote transparency of the Islamic Consultative Assembly.
Using modern technologies will facilitate the possibility of public participation, and will provide a platform for people’s active presence in governance, which will lead into the improvement of governance quality
Launched in 2014 by BudgIT, Tracka is a social platform of/for active citizens who are interested in monitoring public projects in their communities thus enhancing budget performance across the country.
This tool allows researchers, watchdog organizations and investigative journalists to measure how countries are performing against each other in terms of public procurement transparency, to use it in further advocacy for more transparent procurement as well as to spot corruption using red flag indicators.
Es un proyecto que nace desde la sociedad civil para fortalecer sus capacidades de incidencia en los procesos de toma de decisión política y en la generación de un debate público informado sobre la pobreza y la justicia social en España.
Parliamentary Monitoring Group, 2nd floor, Associated Magazines, 21 St. Johns Street, Cape Town 8001
PMG aims to provide accurate, objective, and current information on all parliamentary committee proceedings in the form of detailed, unofficial minutes and documents and since 2007, sound recordings of the meeting.
Civic Tech Field Guide