American banking giant Citi has spearheaded a new challenge for technology innovators around the world to create cutting-edge solutions to serve the public good, particularly promote integrity, accountability and transparency in the public sector and beyond.
The Citi Tech for Integrity Challenge (T4I) – a landmark initiative led by Citi in collaboration with public and private sector allies – will provide public sector entities with access to tech innovators and their ideas on how to increase transparency and efficiency.
T4I is also envisioned to provide the support and infrastructure that tech innovators need to tailor new technology solutions for this market.
“We are proud to launch the Citi Tech for Integrity Challenge,” Julie Monaco, global head of the public sector group in Citi’s corporate and investment banking division said in a press statement. “By supporting open innovation and providing innovators with the tools they need to develop ideas, we hope to help solve some of the biggest challenges that the public sector faces.”
This new challenge is structured as a global open innovation competition, where companies of any type or size can submit technology solutions. The challenge seeks to source innovation in a number of areas, including government transactions and procurement; culture, ethics and citizen engagement; cutting red tape; and information security and identity.
Selected participants will enroll in a virtual accelerator program, which will provide mentoring, curriculum and infrastructure support to help them enhance their submissions. Finalists will showcase their solutions at one of six demo days in cities around the world, including Buenos Aires, Dublin, Hyderabad, Mexico City and Singapore in May and June.
Due to the open nature of the competition, award recipients from the demo days will have the opportunity to work with any business, organization or government interested in exploring innovative integrity tools.
In addition, Citi released the results of a two-month crowdsourcing survey of more than 150 individuals spanning public, private and non-governmental organizations around the world, to identify “integrity pain points” on which developers should focus their efforts. The top issues raised in the survey included beneficiary eligibility; tax administration, including collection and taxpayer identity; transparency in the procurement process; allocation of public funds; and tools to increase transparency and fight corruption.
Citi’s T4I allies include countries and other public and private sector entities looking to bring outside innovation inside their organizations. T4I strategic allies include Clifford Chance, Facebook, IBM, Let’s Talk Payments, Mastercard, Microsoft and PwC.
Citi officially opened the application process for companies to submit ideas for T4I until March 6, 2017. The accelerator program will run from March to April, when finalists will be selected to participate in demo days.
“IBM is excited to work with Citi, its allies and innovators around the world to leverage our technology and expertise,” said Mary Tafuri, director at IBM developer technology and advocacy, noting that IBM has long helped public sector clients transform and address their biggest challenges. “We look forward to helping the public sector use cognitive, cloud and Blockchain technologies to drive innovation and increase efficiencies and transparency that will benefit citizens everywhere.”
“The LTP team looks forward to raising awareness about T4I among our global FinTech audience, especially with MEDICI, the industry’s knowledge network, which will help all startup applicants put their best foot forward as they compete in this complex ecosystem,” said Aditya Khurjekar, CEO and founder of Let’s Talk Payments.
“We work with governments around the world to encourage the adoption of digital payments to help them increase accountability, drive efficiency and encourage inclusive growth,” said Matthew Driver, Executive Vice President, Global Lead for Citi at Mastercard. “With the Citi Tech for Integrity Challenge, we can extend our technology and expertise to help companies that want to create innovative payment and related ecosystem solutions that improve public sector transparency and service delivery.”
“By harnessing new technologies through open innovation and applying them to integrity issues, we will facilitate solutions that will increase transparency and support the fight against corruption,” said Jay Collins, Vice Chairman of Corporate and Investment Banking at Citi. “We hope that this challenge will not only change the integrity paradigm, but demonstrate the power of scaled global public-private partnerships.”
For more details on the Citi Tech for Integrity Challenge, please refer to the T4I website:www.techforintegritychallenge.com.//30