By Chesa Chesa
A non-profit organization dedicated to fostering public accountability in Nigeria, Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative (PLSI), on Thursday presented its newly revamped “Value for Money 3.0” app, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled features to stakeholders for pre-deployment assessment.
The public presentation to anti-corruption and accountability actors from national and subnational levels, was done in Abuja during a focused group discussion on the impact of and adaptation to emerging technologies, including AI, towards enhancing accountability in Nigeria.
Participants at the event included representatives from federal and state anti-corruption agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), federal and state audit institutions, Public Accounts Committees (PACs), as well as delegates from civil society and media.
A press statement issued by PLSI after the event explained that the upgraded technology platform which was first launched in 2016, is now aimed at effectively democratizing citizens’ participation and involvement in efforts to curb public sector corruption and strengthen accountability at all levels of government in Nigeria.
“The ‘Value for Money’ stands out in effort to allow citizens to track, act and report on audited development projects in their communities to improve efficiency in the use of public resources and delivery of services”, the statement said.
In his remarks, the Executive Director of PLSI, Mr. Olusegun Elemo, highlighted the potential of Artificial Intelligence to curb public sector corruption, enhance accountability and improve service delivery to citizens.
“We extremely delighted about this new opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence for our civic technology product – the ‘Value for Money’ platform. Since 2016, we have supported more than 300 communities and over 1,000 citizens to actively use audit data to engage anti-corruption agencies with a view to improving delivery of services.
“While this support has always been semi-automated, our newly upgraded technology platform with AI-enabled features has fully automated that citizens – government engagement process thereby effectively democratizing citizens participation in anti-corruption and accountability efforts in Nigeria.”
Elemo further emphasized that petitions on service delivery and public finance management issues, which used to take weeks and months for citizens and marginalized communities to submit to anti-corruption agencies for investigation, can now be done in less than five minutes using the newly enhanced ‘Value for Money’ platform.
“We are aware of weaknesses of artificial intelligence tools, but we are poised to leveraging its strength to support anti-corruption and accountability efforts in Nigeria. This Focused Group Discussion is a vital platform to learn with stakeholders on how this new opportunity will work for all with consideration for ethics, data privacy and protection”, he added.
