Discover Three Digital Tools Countering Transnational Corruption in Southeast Asia

Written by Kara Frazier Perlman , Communications and Outreach Manager, Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge for Development

In February 2024, the Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge for Development (CTC Grand Challenge) partnered on the fourth regional HackCorruption event , led by Accountability Lab , in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), the Center for International Private Enterprise , and Development Gateway: An IREX Venture . This Southeast Asian regional hackathon brought together nearly 50 changemakers from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to build innovative solutions to counter corruption related to four problem sets: budget and ownership transparency, open contracting and transparency of public procurement, digital citizenship to constrain corruption, and climate finance transparency.

Five winning teams, including three focused on transnational corruption challenges, received up to $10,000 in financial support, mentorship, and ongoing training to build out their innovations. The five winning teams attended a three-day, intensive, in-person session (referred to as a bootcamp) in Jakarta, Indonesia in April 2024, where they continued to build out their innovative digital tools and worked with mentors who have valuable on-the-ground experience in the technology and anti-corruption spaces. Hear from participants about their experience at the bootcamp in the video below.

Three of the five winning teams – Integrity Eyes, Lexicon Beneficial Ownership, and Carbonitor – focused their digital tools on addressing transnational corruption challenges. They join the CTC Grand Challenge’s growing global network of innovators who are pursuing unique approaches to counter corruption, strengthening transparency and accountability, and incentivizing integrity.?

Since the bootcamp in April, the three teams have been hard at work building out their innovative solutions, addressing challenges and learning valuable lessons along the way. As their HackCorruption awards come to an end this month, we asked each team to reflect on their tools, the challenges they have faced, and their long-term goals. We are excited to see how each innovation continues to progress!

Integrity Eyes

Integrity Eyes has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered website platform prototype to enhance transparency, accountability, and fair competition in Malaysian federal-level public procurement with a focus on the construction and infrastructure sectors. These sectors are particularly prone to fund leakages, cost overruns, project delays, and cartel influence in contractor appointments. To combat the potential for corruption in these and other sectors, the Malaysian government adopted Integrity Pacts between contracting authorities and bidders, but did not appoint Independent Expert Monitors (IEMs) to oversee Integrity Pacts due to the costs.

Recent advocacy on this issue compelled the Integrity Eyes team to “…create a platform… that provides expert oversight and also citizen participation,” explained Integrity Eyes team member Raymon Ram. The Integrity Eyes team has trained an AI model using publicly available information like tender advertisements and reports, company registry information, and media statements to create a dashboard that provides real-time monitoring, detailed risk assessments, and proactive risk management for public projects. In turn, volunteer experts from professional bodies can use the dashboard to review ongoing and upcoming procurements, citizens can use it to voice concerns or report any known or suspected malicious activities, and governments can use it to make well-informed procurement decisions. The platform’s chatbot, Abang AI, facilitates secure and anonymous reporting, ensuring every voice is heard. The platform will relay allegations of known or suspected malicious activities to the relevant law enforcement agencies.?

During the implementation period, the team encountered challenges, such as limited data availability. Working closely with their partners and other stakeholders, Integrity Eyes worked to address this issue and recognizes the critical importance of reliable data in ensuring effective monitoring by both IEMs and the general public as a key lesson learned through this process. Although currently focused on the infrastructure and construction sectors, Integrity Eyes intends to extend the platform to other sectors over time. Once fully developed, the platform will also be positioned to expand transnationally, allowing IEMs in countries that adopt Integrity Pacts to leverage the technology for enhanced monitoring and transparency.?

Lexicon Beneficial Ownership

Lexicon Beneficial Ownership is a platform built to empower due diligence in Indonesian procurement. By accumulating data from multiple sources, Lexicon Beneficial Ownership provides lightning-fast background checks and cuts through red tape for efficient, accountable procurement processes. “In Indonesia, there are so many government agencies making policy without data. Through tech, we can help them and give more data and more information so in the end, the policy is based on the best facts,” shared Evandri G. Pantouw, one of the Lexicon Beneficial Ownership team members.

The Lexicon Beneficial Ownership team has amassed more than 9,500 case law, sanction, and blacklist data sets from Indonesian data sources, and is now in the process of extracting data from Singapore and Malaysia. The team has also conducted testing with dozens of potential users in both the private and public sectors, including procurement officers, human resources officers, notaries, prosecutors, and judges, to find persons/companies that have verdicts against them for corruption, bribery, fraud, and environmental crimes or are identified on active blacklists and international sanctions lists.?

This work has not been without its challenges. The team has faced issues with its data extraction method, as each data source has several different types of data structure and metadata. This requires processing each data source in a specific way so the team can make connections within the data, such as finding the beneficiary owner. The team also wants to ensure that the data can be showcased visually to compare data across different sources and provide valuable insights to users.

By connecting data from Lexicon Beneficial Ownership with other beneficial ownership information, procurement officials will be able to make a connection between beneficiaries and their subsidiaries, enabling swift and reliable procurement decisions. The platform will also provide more baseline information on anti-corruption that can be helpful for policymaking and research. The team hopes that Lexicon Beneficial Ownership grows into a social enterprise that can sustain and bring more impact to the anti-corruption space.

Carbonitor

Carbonitor is an open-source online citizen monitoring system prototype designed to improve climate finance transparency and prevent corruption in carbon offset projects in Indonesia and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. The Carbonitor team acknowledges the active role citizens can play as government watchdogs and that citizen oversight and information transparency can prevent corruption. “What we know is that sometimes, there is only so much governments can do, so we know that we need to take matters into our own hands,” explained Yik Wai Chee, a Carbonitor team member.?

Indonesian and Malaysian citizens, such as higher education students, faculty members, researchers, journalists and residents, who are involved in or aware of carbon offset projects, will be encouraged to use the Carbonitor platform to report any anomalies, rights violations, or potential corruption risks. The website platform will be accessible, inclusive and as localized as possible, including local languages and ensuring citizens at the individual district level can access data. Training sessions will be organized to help citizens understand how to use the platform.?

The Carbonitor platform plans to match information collected by citizens with data reported by the government and other organizations and display the resulting data to the public. However, due to difficulties obtaining access to the use of contractual information on public interests from governments and private companies, the team adapted their approach and began integrating open-source data along with citizen feedback. By aggregating available data into an easily accessible platform, Carbonitor aspires to give a voice to citizens and engage them to participate in climate finance activities that affect their communities.?The feedback collected from citizens through the platform will inform climate journalists and carbon offset projects' investors about any potential discrepancies about these climate finance projects.

The platform plans to contribute to increased transparency of existing public, private and civil society-led climate financing information with public interests, leading to a reduction in and hopefully the prevention of corruption. Moving forward, the Carbonitor team will continue to aggregate data from citizens and different carbon registries and will proceed with analyzing the data to determine potential corruption risks before displaying the resulting data publicly.

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