One project I always wanted to do is create a publicly searchable database which mined connections between public officials and their financial interests.<p>It would kind of be like a Facebook which the users had no control over their profiles. All known associates of an individual would be linked together in a giant social network. An algorithm would flag conflicts of interest. This should make it easy to see problems with connections a step away from a public official rather than just high profile associates or close family members.<p>Automated alerts would trigger when individuals within a public official's group are arrested, convicted of a crime, etc. Much like Google's algorithm identifies "bad neighborhoods" of web site links, you could instantly see if a particular public official was surrounded by questionable or explicitly corrupt characters.<p>Most importantly this could be used to generate an easy to understand corruption score, making it simple for the public at large to understand how corrupt the individual is. Once a particular politician or official scored past a certain point they may become an outcast, finding potential campaign fundraisers and advocates avoiding them.<p>The migration of eyeballs away from television and old media is going to have a profound impact on the democratic political space. Imagine if a political candidates advertisements delivered via Google also contained a corruption score next to them, much like how e-commerce stores on Adwords display user ratings.
I gush about Slovenia all the time. During my 3 years living in Europe, it was probably my favorite place to travel to . . . absolutely gorgeous country and great people . . . also really darn innovative, smart and open (as illustrated by this project).
With all the doom and gloom of the economy, naysaying, sky-is-falling, world-is-ending discussion (much of it warranted), it's nice to see that we're still progressing - as a global society- towards freedom and transparency.<p>Bonus points for this progression being driven by technology.
Good stuff, but only as strong as its weakest link - what's reported to the government, and corruption can creep in at many levels. But this is a great step.
Neat. To get started, try entering "UJP" in the top box, and hitting the button. Then translate that field, or let Chrome keep doing it for you (that's a handy feature). You can dive into companies and even individual transactions, though I haven't seen any itemized receipts yet :)