Fighting Corruption in Brazil with Machine Learning

The maze of shell companies and indirect associations would make it relatively easily to bypass automated scrutiny. But it's an interesting idea I've thought a lot about.

It would be great to automatically analyze things such as government contracts and the politicians who were involved in getting it voted in. But you'd need a data source of the social network graphs of those who are behind organizations - which could be a requirement for bidding on government contracts. Anyone who doesn't submit an accurate network of human contacts who will ultimately make financial gain from a contract will be barred from all future contracts.

That would serve as an excellent deterrent for politicians who plan to use their position of power for personal gain and promote the usage of companies who actually deserve to be getting contracts (improving the quality of government output).

I've thought about this a lot for India as well. To be realistic we would need unprecedented levels of transparency to get the amount of data needed to get usable results. With the amount of nepotism around even constructing a simple network of party heads of each state and related companies and contracts awarded for public work would be valuable.

At this stage we really should think of it more in terms of documenting corruption rather than stopping corruption. When (and if) the system is ready to change the data would be extremely useful to see why things are happening the way they are and work out if solutions would just move the corruption-bottleneck rather than eliminate it.

Doomed to fail. There won't be enough non-corruption data for discrimination.

This is the same as "fighting massive surveillance with X", the root of the problem is how the system works. These kind of problems cannot be solved by anything but a massive change in the status quo. As long as corrupt politicians are in power they cannot care less for evidence of potential wrongdoings. In Mexico a renowned writer once said about that: "when the impunity is absolute the appearances are for losers"

How exactly do you think this comment is contributing to the project?