HACK.CORRUPTION – Winners of the first anticorruption Hackathon in Moldova were awarded

During 48 hours, 11 teams worked hard to conceptualize and develop innovative solutions to engage citizens to actively report corruption and to encourage authorities to meaningfully fight the stigma. The participants at the hackathon were guided by local and international experienced mentors.

“The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, having the overarching goal to end poverty and ensure lives of dignity for all, recognizes corruption as a global problem and the need to fight corruption in all its aspects. By this hackaton, we want to raise public awareness and engage women and men, in particular youth, in anti-corruption efforts and cultivate a climate of zero-tolerance towards corruption. We believe that bringing together tech community, civil activists and representatives of governance institutions in an informal atmosphere will result in original and innovative ideas and solutions which will contribute on preventing corruption in Moldova”, said Olga Crivoliubic, Project Manager at UNDP Moldova.

On the evening of 10 July, the developed prototypes were presented and following the jury’s evaluation, three of them were awarded:

• Winner: Open Money. A platform that shows who are the end beneficiaries of public tenders by using open data to connect data on public procurement and founders/directors of businesses.
• 1st runner up: StartMoldova. Platform where entrepreneurs can ask questions regarding the complicated bureaucratic processes in Moldova, and receive official answers that clarify these processes.
• 2nd runner up: COBOT. A platform that teaches users how to behave when encountering cases of corruption.

The winners will be awarded $10,000 and will be coached during 6 months by a team of local and Estonian mentors, to continue developing the concepts into IT products ready to be uptaken by the public.

The HACK.CORRUPTION hackathon was attended by 50 participants: NGOs, investigative journalists, developers, marketers and civic activists.

UNDP Moldova organized another hackathon in 2015, focusing on developing applications for the study of mathematics in schools. According to the recently launched Global Innovation Index which ranks the innovation performance of 141 countries and economies around the world, the Republic of Moldova has been identified as one of the rising innovators in Europe. In addition, our country was positioned as an innovation outperformer with best ranking among lower-middle-income countries.