15IACC: What is Corruption Mapping?

What is corruption mapping? In the past year, we have seen a rise of corruption tracking maps or maps that include tracking corruption as part of their project. A number of our Deployment of the Weeks have been corruption maps. And, one of our Trusted Developers, Tarik Nash-Nesh, has been a leader connecting Ushahidi's community with Transparency International.

Fight Corruption with Online Tools

This week we're attending the 15th International Anti-Corruption Conference 2012. We're hosting a Game Changer Session Fight Corruption: Online Tools and Best Practices featuring participants of the Transparency International, K-monitor, Kuhonga and Ushahidi communities.

From mapping to crowdsourcing to new technologies, this game changer session will discuss new methods to track and amplify the fight against corruption by empowering the public. We will highlight technology use cases, issues and challenges. We invite you to brainstorm on topics from digital literacy, security, and ensuring privacy. Our session is about action. We will break into groups for deeper discussions. One of the outcomes is create document outline for anti-corruption activists to guide their efforts.

Youth are changing tactics for anti-corruption activism. They bring a zest for mobile and new media (pictures and videos). They seamlessly activate and share with their online social networks. No longer are activists tied to fighting corruption in 50-page PDF documents. They can map, create information forensics models, do deep data dives and visualize information in new ways. However, there is great merit in combining these new methods with existing, more formal practices. As much as it is key to open our arms and minds to new tactics for corruption fighting, it is even more critical to be mindful and build response plans for the potential security and privacy risks. We need a marriage of new and youthful anti-corruption tactics with existing techniques and methodology. Our goal of the 15IACC session is to community-source a table of contents for a corruption mapping toolkit. We want to provide our community with some subject matter expert guidance on best practices. While the session is not only focused on mapping, the use of most online tools or tactics will be very appropriate. We'll post the results to the wiki to share and to evolve the content.

Mapping Corruption: Back to Basics

What can Corruption mappers learn from Crisismappers? Well, they can consider the basics:

What is your map mission? What is your project plan?

A map is not an end in itself. What type of data (categories) are you collecting? Why? What will you do with the data?

How will you protect the privacy and security of those who report?

What is your planned outcome? How will you verify the information?

Earlier today, the UNDP published a post by one of our featured mappers, Kallxo, entitled: "I Paid a Bribe, So what? An experience from Kosovo." This is now mandatory reading for any new corruption mapper. Truly, we could not have written a better analysis of the methodology and tactics required. At this point, we might blog this sentence weekly, but successful deployments require the 5 T's: Team, Trust, Time, Training and Tenacity. Yes, of course, as a software company, we encourage you to try out various tools as part of your strategy...with the 5 T's.

Around the Globe Corruption Maps

(divided into two parts):

Around the Globe Corruption Mapping (part 1) from Ushahidi

Around the Globe Corruption Mapping (part 2) from Ushahidi