Open Government Data

for Tackling Corruption A

Perspective
Nidhi Rajashree, Biplav Srivastava
IBM Research India

Semantic Cities Workshop @ AAAI, Toronto, Canada

July 2012

Outline
Corruption
Good or Bad
Factors
Case Study

Open Data for Corruption

Difference from economic growth focus
Call for Action

Corruption
the misuse of public office for personal
gains
as an act of bribery involving a public
servant and a transfer of tangible
resources
Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion
Accountability
An actxperformed by an agentAis an act of institutional corruption if and only if:
1. xhas an effect,E1, of undermining, or contributing to the undermining of, some institutional
process and/or purpose of some institution,I, and/or an effect,Ec, of contributing to the
despoiling of the moral character of some role occupant ofI, agentB, qua role occupant ofI;
2. At least one of (a) or (b) is true:
a) Ais a role occupant ofI, and in performingx,Aintended or foresawE1and/orEc,
orAshould have foreseenE1and/orEc;
b) There is a role occupant ofI, agentB, andBcould have avoidedEc, ifBhad chosen to do
so.[19]
Note that (2)(a) tells us thatAis a corruptor and is, therefore, either (straightforwardly) morally
responsible for the corrupt action, orAis not morally responsible forA's corrupt character and
the corrupt action is an expression ofA's corrupt character.
Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/corruption/

Corruption Perception Index

(2011)

Source: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/

Shades of Corruption
Bribery
payment made in money or kind and can be initiated
either by the public servant or the beneficiary. It can
be extortionary, collusive or anticipatory

Favoritism & Nepotism

a mechanism of power abuse implying privatization
and highly biased distribution of state resources, no
matter how these resources have been accumulated
in the first place.

Embezzlement
theft of government property and resources by
people who are entrusted upon to take care of it.

Factor conducive for

Corruption
Lack of awareness
Lack of proper Service-Level Agreements
Lax supervision and monitoring of staff
performance
Discretion
Absence of appropriate grievance
redressal mechanisms
Obsolete policies

Tackling Corruption
Lack of awareness
can be removed by clearly specifying the guidelines and
information about the services.

Lack of proper SLAs

can be taken care by a time bound service can be easily
tracked by the citizens if the information is freely available
hence empowering them to seek penalty when the SLA is
missed.

Lack of accountability, supervision

can be improved through institutional diagnostics such as
periodic or social auditing which can be facilitated by well
documented information at disposal.

Discretion
can also be kept under check if these subjective decisions are
well documented and hence available for review.

Grievance mechanisms and obsolete policies need to be

directly addressed

India: (Mahatma Gandhi)

National Rural Employment
Guarantee Program
Indianjob guaranteescheme, enacted by legislation on August 25,
2005.
NREGA is an Indian job guarantee scheme, enacted as law in 2005.
Designed as a safety net to reduce migration by rural poor households
in the lean period.
A hundred days of guaranteed unskilled manual labour provided when
demanded at minimum wage
works focused on water conservation, land development & drought proofing

Finances
Statutoryminimum wageofRs 120 (US$2.39)per day at2009 prices.
The Central government outlay for scheme is40,000crore(US$7.98 billion)in FY
201011

Mired in complaints of corruption

References

http://nrega.nic.in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi_National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act

NREGA Key Processes

Application for job card
Prone to
corruptio
n

Issue of job
card
Demand for
employment
Prone
to

corruptio
n

Work allocation

Selection of works
Approval of shelf of
projects

Verification

Informing village PRI

Acknowledgement
of
demand

Preparation of estimates
And approvals

ICT based
transparen
cy

ICT based
transparen
cy

Maintenance of muster roll

Payment of wages
Prone to
corruptio
n

Adapted from deck: [PPT]

NREGAImplementation [Presentation to
NAC]

Open Government Data

Open Gov. Data for Economic Growth is Well

Known
(Initiatives Across the World)

From Google Maps

Local or regional
governmental authorities

Local or regional private

initiatives
Nationwide governmental
authorities
Nationwide private
initiatives
Multilateral /
Transnational initiatives

Open Government Data policies would increase direct business activity by up to

40 billion per year (0.3% of EU's GDP) and overall benefit could be up to 200 billion
per year (1.7% of GDP)
Open data could generate 6 billion of added value to the UK economy
*

Source: World Map of Open Government Data Initiatives, Google Maps, the underlying world map is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY
11
3.0 Austria) by Semantic Web Company (www.semantic-web.at) (accessed October 3, 2011)

Open Government
Data Helps Sustain
Economic Growth

By Reducing Corruption and

Increasing Competitiveness
Open govt data leads to transparency
With transparency, it is easy to
establish accountability
Both together help tackle corruption
Corruption : Monopoly + Discretion
Accountability (Klitgaard, Robert E.
Controlling corruption. Berkeley: U. of California
Press, 1988)

Call for Action

Governments should
come out with data sharing/ disclosure policies, and
Example: USA - US Executive Order 13556, Controlled Unclassified
Information, At http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2010/11/04/executive-order-controlledunclassifiedinformation

Example: India - National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

(NDSAP) at http://dst.gov.in/NDSAP.pdf

implement them!

Industry and standardization bodies can help

by documenting best practices,

building necessary tools
using open standards, and
reporting case studies.