<story><title>Fighting Corruption in Brazil with Machine Learning</title><url>https://github.com/datasciencebr/serenata-de-amor/blob/master/README-en.md</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rmsaksida</author><text>I was a bit disappointed by this because it feels more like people trying to get press and make a name for themselves than an actual serious endeavor at digging through open government data with ML. The first thing you see in the README is links to numerous social media profiles, followed by a Kickstarter link and a BTC address. Zero technical info. Looking into the Kickstarter (well, Catarse, the Brazilian copycat), apparently there&amp;#x27;s a young company behind this - &amp;quot;Data Science Brigade&amp;quot;. So I guess this is partly a publicity stunt.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but if you guys are serious about building this &lt;i&gt;open&lt;/i&gt; you should make it entirely technical and keep any press&amp;#x2F;social media&amp;#x2F;financial bullshit out of it. Entirely separated. In addition, if the project is sponsored by a company, make that clear in a notice somewhere. It just doesn&amp;#x27;t feel honest to do it any other way. I&amp;#x27;m not going to contribute with time or money to a project that claims to be about &amp;quot;fighting corruption&amp;quot; but might have all sorts of unknown interests behind it. I&amp;#x27;d be pleased to contribute otherwise.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fighting Corruption in Brazil with Machine Learning</title><url>https://github.com/datasciencebr/serenata-de-amor/blob/master/README-en.md</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>asimov42</author><text>I&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;At this stage we really should think of it more in terms of &lt;i&gt;documenting&lt;/i&gt; corruption rather than &lt;i&gt;stopping&lt;/i&gt; 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.</text></comment>