The Ministry of Home Affairs yesterday launched its newest initiative to curb corruptio
n with the ipaidabribe.gy website. Minister Clement Rohee said that the website would utilize tips and maintain the anonymity of persons who report bribes and other criminal activities. He stated that the initiative was targeting the thousands of people who have access to the internet and it is moving technologically forward.
Rohee told Stabroek News that the website was based on keeping the ministry technologically savvy and alert to the changing world.
Floyd Levi, a Ministry IT specialist stated that the website was designed to work in two parts with the reporting of crimes and bribes. He noted that the crime mapping system was to allow citizens to click on the neighbourhood and report crimes and as crimes were reported through colour coding, the types would be documented. He noted that the updating of the crime mapping would be “as close to real time” updating as possible, but that this had to be worked out as this feature of the website was not fully online as yet.
Levi noted that there was an overall aim to have the website function as a data collection network. He said that the more crimes reported the more information could be gathered. He added that the real-time approach was actively tied to making communities safer. If the website was to become second nature to citizens then police would have the ability to formulate predictive data. Levi stated that once data was collected, allocations for the various agencies in the ministry could then also be analyzed.
He noted that a feature of the website was to integrate predictive crime modelling software which was aimed at preventative measures being addressed.
Nkasi Nedd, a system developer at the ministry stated that it was not just immediate police action that the website was aimed at but measuring the correlation between crime and the socioeconomic neighbourhood make-up.
She said that the entire objective was to build a model for measuring crime and that the project was to move beyond just being used by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Nedd stated that on a weekly and monthly basis the findings would be studied and patterns of crimes would be established.
The ipaidabribe series of websites originated in Indian in 2010 and has since spread throughout the developing world and Europe.
