Information and Communication Technologies

Can artificial intelligence stop corruption in its tracks?

AI and data have the potential to prevent corruption. Graphic: Nicholas Nam/World Bank

The amount of goods and services that governments purchase to discharge their official business is a staggering $10 trillion per year – and is estimated at 10 to 25 percent of global GDP. Without effective public scrutiny, the risk of money being lost to corruption and misappropriation is vast. Citizens, rightly so, are demanding more transparency around the process for awarding government contracts. And, at the end of the day, corruption hurts the poor the most by reducing access to essential services such as health and education.

I get stirred up by all types of governance data, so in honor of the International Day for Universal Access to Information, I though I’d highlight a few efforts to measure access to information. Information on access to information, if you will.

School children in Nepal. Graphic: Nicholas Nam/World Bank

Thirty years ago, almost everyone in Nepal — except for a few professionals and business people — would have been classified as poor by any international standard.

In 2010, by contrast, 15 percent of Nepalis were considered poor.

Without a doubt, Nepal has made progress.

In the fiscal transparency arena, people often hear two conflicting claims. First, governments complain that few people take advantage of fiscal information that they make publicly available. Many countries - including fragile and low-income countries such as Togo and Haiti – have been opening up their budgets to public scrutiny by making fiscal data available, often through web portals.

Increasing the supply of fiscal information, however, often does not translate to the adequate demand and usage required to bring some of the intended benefits of transparency such as increased citizen engagement, and accountability. Providing a comprehensive budget dataset to the public does not guarantee that citizens, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the media will start digging through the numbers.

Editor's note: This blog post is part of a series for the 'Bureaucracy Lab', a World Bank initiative to better understand the world's public officials.

“By introducing an automated customer management system we took a noose and put it around our own necks. We are now accountable!”

This reflection from a manager in the Nairobi Public Water and Sewerage utility succinctly captures the impact of MajiVoice, a digital system that logs customer complaints, enables managers to assign the issue to a specific worker, track its resolution, and report back to the customer via an SMS. As a result, complaint resolution rates have doubled, and the time taken to resolve complaints has dropped by 90 percent.

MajiVoice shows that digital technologies can dramatically improve public sector capacity and accountability in otherwise weak governance environments. But is this example replicable? Can the increasingly cheap and ubiquitous digital technologies—there are now 4.7 billion mobile phone users in the world—move the needle on governance and make bureaucrats more accountable?

Industrial area in the city of Kitwe, Zambia - located in the copper belt. Photo: Arne Hoel

What would you expect in a mineral rich developing country? High Government revenues from the mineral resources? Not always, and definitely not in the case of Zambia - until recently.

Zambia has a considerable wealth of mineral resources and its economy depends heavily on these minerals. Zambia's primary export, copper and copper-related products, account for as much as 77% of the country's exports.

Data Literacy Bootcamp in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Photo: Usman Khaliq, iDT Labs

Increasing evidence suggests that, to improve accountability and promote evidence-based decision making, open access to data and data literacy skills are essential. While in-person educational opportunities can be limited in parts of the developing world, free educational tools are available online to boost data literacy skills.

In June 2016, Code for Africa, with support from the World Bank’s Open Government Global Solutions Group, held a Data Literacy Bootcamp in Freetown, Sierra Leone, for 55 participants, including journalists, civil society members, and private and public sector representatives. One of the Bootcamp’s primary objectives was to build data literacy skills to nurture the homegrown development of information and communication technologies (ICT) solutions to development problems.

Here are five tools Bootcamp participants employed to help capture, manipulate, and visualize data:

From time to time, everyone encounters sleek products whose form seems to eclipse their function—an image-heavy website that fails to provide basic information, or a shiny gadget with an all-too-brief usable life. Many of us are occasionally guilty of creating such products, but we also shouldn’t underestimate the importance of design, especially when trying to reach a general audience with an initiative or service.

While 85 percent of participating OGP countries have digitized their public records, only 16 percent are storing them in secure, professionally managed digital repositories.

On April 22 and April 29, 2016 representatives from Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Sierre Leone, South Africa, and Tanzania came together in a virtual South-South Knowledge exchange hosted by the World Bank in collaboration with the Open Government Partnership to discuss an issue of mounting concern: managing records and information to support open government. These countries – committed to the goal of open government, and a number with new right to information laws and open data initiatives - were motivated by increasing recognition that their commitments to make information open cannot be fully realized until they increase their capacity to manage records and information, especially the growing amount of information in digital form.

Local leaders have turned to OpenStreetMaps (OSM), and use targeted drone tracking to document road needs and investment progress. Photo: Kai Kaiser

Amazon is promising to deliver goods with drones. Seeing these prospective innovations in airborne delivery, we’ll be forgiven for thinking that bad roads will increasingly be secondary concerns.

But the reality is that “last mile” road access will continue to be a major and costly development challenge for years to come. “Last mile" access refers to road to final destinations, whether communities, crops, markets, schools or clinics. These are typically provincial, city-municipal and barangay (village) roads in the Philippines.

Often the responsibility of local governments, these roads determine the ease and cost by which people and goods can get to final destinations. Communities across the globe face poor road access, depriving them of economic and social opportunities, whether bringing produce to markets, getting kids to school, or mothers to clinics. Billions of dollars continue to be spent on last mile road access, but often with very poor results.

Can drone technology make a difference?

Information and Communication Technologies

Can artificial intelligence stop corruption in its tracks?

Where to go for information on access to information

How data can benefit Nepal

What can governments do to bridge the gap between producers and users of budget information

E-bureaucracy: Can digital technologies spur public administration reform?

Innovative solutions for resource mobilization in Zambia

Five tools for capturing, manipulating, and visualizing data

Visuals matter: Public goods and effective design

African countries come together to address gaps in managing digital information for open government

Drones for better roads: Pointers from the Philippines

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