An­ti-cor­rup­tion ad­vo­cate Mar­garet Rose has tak­en her pas­sion for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic pro­cure­ment straight to cy­ber­space with the cre­ation of an on­line plat­form–Dis­clo­sure To­day!The plat­form, which will be­come op­er­a­tional on Tues­day when it is launched on the Web site www.dis­clo­sure.to­day, is tak­ing whistle­blow­ing in T&T in­to the dig­i­tal age.

It will of­fer cit­i­zens a se­cure place to re­lay in­for­ma­tion on cor­rup­tion at state bod­ies and state projects, as well as fa­cil­i­tate link­ages be­tween pub­lic in­ter­est at­tor­neys and like mind­ed cit­i­zens.Rose, a lawyer, is cur­rent­ly in the Unit­ed King­dom where she is work­ing on putting the fi­nal touch­es on the plat­form with her tech­ni­cal team from the Lis­bon In­no­va­tion Klus­ter (www.linnk.us), an MIT Por­tu­gal spin-off head­ed by CEO Vas­co Por­tu­gal.

Por­tu­gal is al­so part of the Dis­clo­sure To­day! team which in­cludes lawyers Justin Phelps, Ye­le­na He­witt and Tanya Alex­is.Rose, the found­ing di­rec­tor of Dis­clo­sure To­day! and co-founder of the Caribbean Pro­cure­ment In­sti­tute, told the Sun­day Guardian that the Dis­clo­sure To­day! or­gan­i­sa­tion is "built on the foun­da­tion of trans­paren­cy."

She ex­plained, via e-mail, that "re­search has shown that over 50 per cent of the cor­rup­tion cas­es which have re­sult­ed in charges and con­vic­tions are as a re­sult of a whis­tle-blow­er com­ing for­ward. The Dis­clo­sure To­day! plat­form cre­ates a safer en­vi­ron­ment than cur­rent­ly ex­ists for civic-mind­ed cit­i­zens with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward."

The Dis­clo­sure To­day! plat­form, which had a soft launch in De­cem­ber with the cre­ation of a Face­book com­mu­ni­ty page, al­so pro­vides cit­i­zens with guid­ance for Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) ap­pli­ca­tions to in­quire in­to pub­lic pro­cure­ment projects.

She said it "cre­ates a pub­lic in­ter­est mar­ket­place con­nect­ing cit­i­zens, lawyers and pub­lic of­fi­cials and us­ing the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy and new me­dia to in­crease pub­lic sec­tor trans­paren­cy there­by dri­ving cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic pro­cure­ment de­ci­sion-mak­ing."

She said the plat­form was a crit­i­cal as­set for en­sur­ing there was ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in pub­lic pro­cure­ment. The plat­form is al­so time­ly since the long-await­ed Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Bill was passed in Par­lia­ment last De­cem­ber.The Dis­clo­sure To­day! plat­form, she said, "al­lows pub­lic bod­ies to in­ter­act with cit­i­zens ear­ly on in a project cy­cle and to re­port on project com­mis­sion­ing and man­age­ment."

It is built around the prin­ci­ples of the new Open Con­tract­ing Move­ment world­wide, she added.The plat­form al­lows cit­i­zens to au­to­mate re­quests for in­for­ma­tion un­der the FOIA, pro­pose a so­lu­tion to com­mu­ni­ty prob­lems and make a Pub­lic In­ter­est Dis­clo­sure (PID) anony­mous­ly or con­fi­den­tial­ly. The plat­form will al­so con­tain re­sources and links to pub­lic bod­ies.

Rose as­sured that "pub­lic bod­ies should not feel threat­ened by the plat­form as it al­so en­cour­ages proac­tive dis­clo­sure by bod­ies which will mit­i­gate and in some cas­es erad­i­cate op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­tract­ed, time and re­source in­ten­sive re­spons­es to re­quests for in­for­ma­tion un­der the act."She be­lieves that if Dis­clo­sure To­day! is em­braced by cit­i­zens it can be a game chang­er for T&T.

"We could be an ex­am­ple to the rest of the world of how to cre­ate bot­tom-up so­lu­tions to cre­ate changes on pub­lic gov­er­nance is­sues. Al­so, it is re­al­ly a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty, in­ter­nal­ly for cit­i­zens who are frus­trat­ed but dis­il­lu­sioned, cit­i­zen ac­tivists, NGOs and Me­dia to col­lab­o­rate around ini­tia­tives, gain sup­port and en­gage in pub­lic de­ci­sion-mak­ing is­sues," she added.

Rose said her mantra has be­come one of "stop look­ing to our 'lead­ers' to save us, let us look to the lead­ers with­in our­selves."Dis­clo­sure To­day! gives every cit­i­zen the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come a po­lit­i­cal game chang­er, "if they want to be and have the courage to fol­low through," she said."Dis­clo­sure To­day! will be what we the cit­i­zens of T&T make it. What it means to the coun­try, will de­pend on how we in T&T re­spond to and en­gage with it."

recog­ni­tion

On­line plat­form cops in­ter­na­tion­al an­ti-cor­rup­tion award

Even though Dis­clo­sure To­day! is set to be­come op­er­a­tional on Tues­day, it has al­ready gar­ner­ing recog­ni­tion by cop­ping the In­ter­na­tion­al An­ti-Cor­rup­tion So­cial En­tre­pre­neurs Ini­tia­tive Glob­al 2014 award.Last week, IACC an­nounced Dis­clo­sure To­day!, to­geth­er with Sky­less Game Stu­dios's City Hall Video game (USA) and Pablo Ri­va's FAEN�N project (Pe­ru), as win­ners of its So­cial En­tre­pre­neurs com­pe­ti­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the IACC Web site, 156 ap­pli­ca­tions from 48 dif­fer­ent coun­tries world­wide on a huge range of cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed is­sues were sub­mit­ted.All three will re­ceive 5,000 Eu­ros in "seed" mon­ey to kick-start their projects.Rose said she was re­al­ly pleased and ex­cit­ed by the award.

"I see this win as an ac­knowl­edg­ment on a glob­al lev­el that I am on the right track and should keep press­ing on. I feel I have fi­nal­ly found my niche in "so­cial" or as some would call my strain "civic" en­tre­pre­neur­ship. I am ex­cit­ed about the kind of im­pact I will be able to make us­ing my en­er­gy to solve so­cial chal­lenges and in par­tic­u­lar, my cur­rent so­cial pas­sion...an­ti-cor­rup­tion," Rose said.

She said the award was not on­ly key to her an­ti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign but to T&T's de­vel­op­ment as well."This is an awe­some op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to be placed on the world map in a re­al­ly pos­i­tive way. All around the world, so­ci­eties are look­ing for more in­no­v­a­tive and ef­fec­tive method­olo­gies for erad­i­cat­ing cor­rup­tion and deep­en­ing civic en­gage­ment in rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cies," she said.