Using Data Mining To Fight Corruption

Many companies thrive on data to influence the changes they see within their global marketplaces. Data allows companies to forecast, within their industries, on how to manage and proceed with their company’s business agenda. What if data could help in solving issues that affect world markets? What if, the large amounts of data that is used to make critical business decisions, can be used to monitor the threats companies face in the world of corruption? Helene Pfeil, of Transparency International, writes about a very interesting point in her article, The Potential of Fighting Corruption Through Data Mining.  With large amounts of data being collected to profile customer behavior and to buy performances for customers, perhaps this same data can quickly analyze potential warning signs that can ultimately lead up to acts of corruption with any organization. Data in itself is a constant timeline of activity that goes into detail about any action at any given time. Additionally, like any constant there are similarities. There are patterns, that are identified, that could be seen as potential warning signs for acts of corruption. 

“Researchers from the Corruption Research Center Budapest have examined massive data sets of public procurement procedures from European Union countries, searching for abnormal patterns such as exceptionally short bidding periods or unusual outcomes (e.g. no competition for the winning bid, or bids repeatedly won by the same company). Using inferential statistics – analysis that can be done to draw conclusions beyond what the data actually is capturing – they identified corrupt behavior based on deviations from ordinary patterns.”

Now that data is collected on almost all aspects of human interactions, it would be information that is very easily collected with the volume of connectivity people are capable of globally.

“The wealth of data that can nowadays be gathered through remote sensing, crowd-sourced citizen reports, news media, census data, cell phone activity, and social networking sites etc., combined with traditional indicators, makes for seemingly endless opportunities. Do you want to identify issues of conflict of interest and/or revolving doors? Do you want to know what people are thinking about corruption in a specific country context? Text mining techniques analyzing social media noise during a given period of time may provide you with an answer.”

As technology grows, so do the innovated ideas that spawn into programs, which help contribute for a more ethical and principled global marketplace. Source Intelligence, with its cloud-based platform, allows for constant communication for global brands doing business with 3^rd party business partners. As companies grow, and the need for relying on best practices from their business partners grow as well, Source Intelligence uses its expertise and innovative solutions to help global brands in their anti-corruption efforts. To request a demo or obtain a free assessment to benchmark your companies’ anti-corruption efforts, click here.