Organization of American States Redoubles Efforts To Combat Corruption With Big Data, Artificial Intelligence & Analytics

Prior to the OAS General Assembly held last month in Medellín, Colombia, member countries of the Organization of American States proposed to strengthen the use of technology to combat corruption in The Americas. “According to the Corruption Perception Index prepared by Transparency International in 2018, Colombia ranks 99th out of 180 nations. Brazil and Peru are ranked 105, Ecuador 114, Haiti 161 and Venezuela 168,” said Colombia’s ICT Minister Sylvia Constain in her speech to the assembly.

During the diplomatic gathering in Medellín, representatives to the Organization of American States (OAS) including United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, and other hemispheric neighbors met to decide the actions that will promote transparency with the use of open data in the Americas.

Constain added: “Fighting corruption is a challenge that is not easy, but our task and function is to change, innovate, find new ways to trace its path, to try to extinguish it once and for all…In these months that we have been in government, Colombia has worked on the creation of an environment that allows open data to become more accessible to all. Only to the extent that we can guarantee access to information, it will become a tool for analysis and transparency for the government, civil society, academia and the private sector.”

Open data is public information generated by governments and disseminated in easily accessible formats to any citizen without restriction, hence the importance in the implementation of analytics or Artificial Intelligence (AI), to identify patterns of corruption or generate alerts

“Big data and AI help us generate alerts and identify patterns associated with corruption that can occur, for example, in public procurement or health where this analysis has allowed us to find these anomalous behaviors,” said the Presidential Adviser for Innovation and the Digital Transformation, Víctor Manuel Muñoz Rodríguez,, who participated in one of the panels of the international meeting.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4RI) allows us to massively analyze this data, correlate it and citizens can efficiently access this information,” Muñoz added.

The Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, stated “It is necessary to guarantee transparency in the management of our institutions. Constant news about corruption erodes the credibility of institutions. Speaking of the right to access and use public information, about transparency; The OAS has been promoting this issue throughout the region.”

Above photo: Left to right: Victor Muñoz, Sylvia Constain, Luis Almagro (Courtesy of MinTic Colombia)