NABU team's Anti-Corruption Augmented Reality project wins Integrity Hackathon in Vilnius
The team of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau won the finals of the Integrity Hackathon – an international innovation competition in the field of integrity and anti-corruption, which took place on Nov. 11, 2022, in Vilnius. The event was organized by the Lithuanian Special Investigation Service (Specialiųjų tyrimų tarnyba, STT).
The semifinals of the event held online on Sep. 29-30, 2022, brought together transparency enthusiasts and professionals from different fields. 13 teams participated, whose members represented six countries: experts from Lithuania, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Romania, and Brazil generated ideas at the hackathon. As a result, "Faircheck" and "Vilniaus vystymo kompanija" from Lithuania and the team assembled by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) from Ukraine were selected to contest at the final.
The winning project, which was awarded the highest number of points by the jury, was developed by employees of the Department of External Communications of NABU. Built on real cases investigated by NABU detectives, with the help of AR ("augmented reality") technology, this project allows everyone to see a different reality - without corruption: all you need is a smartphone and access to the Internet. In addition, thanks to the project, you can learn more about this or that investigation, as well as how and where to report about this or that corruption case.
The jury comprised a number of well-known figures in the anti-corruption community, including Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions, Martin Kreutner, Dean Emeritus of the International Anti-Corruption Academy (Austria), and Žydrūnas Bartkus, the Director of the STT, and Roberto Perez Rocha, the Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series (IACC) with Transparency International.
"With this international hackathon, we are glad that transparency enthusiasts from different countries of the world responded. Congratulations to all the teams that participated and particular greetings are for those who made it to the final. Hackathon teams provided many innovative and interesting ideas that may contribute to the formation of a transparent environment throughout Europe," said the Head of the STT Žydrūnas Bartkus.
A few words about the project itself. The Anti-Corruption Augmented Reality is a mobile photo exhibition that shows a person a series of consequences caused by corruption: a bad road, a destroyed architectural monument, a parking lot built instead of a school swimming pool. With the help of AR technology, everyone can see a different reality – without corruption: all you need is a mobile phone and access to the Internet. In addition, each poster allows you to learn more about a particular case, taken from real life and investigated by detectives, and also tells how and where to report a particular corruption case.
