Bangkok aims to use the Open Data initiative to tackle corruption problems by encouraging public participation.

Bangkok deputy governor Sanon Wangsrangboon announced the city’s anti-corruption policy at a seminar titled “Using Open Data to improve governance and integrity”, hosted by Chulalongkorn University as part of its 18th “Chula The Impact” event on Friday.

The seminar discussed new initiatives and innovations, as well as how to address obstacles in promoting governance and integrity among state agencies in the Southeast Asia region.

Sanon said Open Data is part of the “Open Bangkok” policy of city development in five aspects, with focus on establishing a data centre providing information related to the administration’s operations to the public.

“The Open Data Centre might not necessarily provide in-depth information on all aspects, but it would prioritise user experience and provide services that match the user’s need for information,” he said.

Other aspects of the “Open Bangkok” policy are Open Services, Open Contract, Open Innovation and Open Policy.

Sanon added that in the Open Services aspect, Bangkok has developed the Traffy Fondue online platform to accept public complaints and communicate progress of the operations. After one year, the platform has helped fix 220,586 out of 304,570 issues it accepted, with average time spent on each problem at 114 hours.

“About 61% of the complaints were filed outside office hours, which means the technology has helped officials in serving people at any time, improving the overall governance of Bangkok,” he said.

Sanon added that the Open Contract also promotes the publishing of public work contracts on the public-accessible database to ensure transparency in budget usage.

“This works similarly to the Open Policy aspect, in which all the 226 policies of the Bangkok governor are available on the city’s website so people can check the progress of each of them at any time,” he said.

Sanon said that Governor Chadchart Sittipunt places equal importance to the city’s mega-projects and projects at the community level, and has implemented modern technology to improve the work process and establish platforms that promote and facilitate participation by the public.