The Transparency Card is an innovation that uses a function native to phones, the mobile wallet, to deliver real-time notifications about politicians' spending.

Data was never gathered, organized, and brought to the audience like this before.

We created an extractor of the government data systems to take information and used a machine learning to crunch this data. Thus, we can present them in the most simplified way for citizens in a new media, native to phones: the digital wallet.

Not an app or webapp,but something everyone already carries in their pocket — turning mobile wallets into a tool against corruption.

Brazil loses about $40 Billion per year to corrupt politician spending.

Although Brazilians have the constitutional right to access information about politicians' use of public funds, the data is complex to monitor, leaving room for corrupts to act without being watched.

So amid the most critical and polarized elections in Brazil's history, with a significant amount of fake news, and the threat to transparency posed by President Bolsonaro's secrecy orders to hide his own spending data, Congresso em Foco, an independent Brazilian digital news portal, came to us with a brief:

How to provide quality information to voters so that they can push for transparency in Brazil?

Public money is people's money. So Congresso em Foco created an innovation that sends real-time notifications whenever a Brazilian politician spends taxpayer's money: the Transparency Card.

It's connected in real-time with multiple open but complex government databases.

Designed to be as seamless as possible, it mimics the familiar way people track their personal credit card spending. That's why it doesn't need an app, nor a webapp — just a function native to phones, the mobile wallet. Which turns every Brazilian with a phone into a potential watchdog over public money.

For example, if a politician spends $23,000 on a private jet, Brazilians receive a real-time push notification. With this information in hand, they can push for more transparency, questioning each expense.

To track the expenses of more than 500 politicians, visit cartaodatransparencia.com and add the cards of the politicians you want to watch to your wallet.

February 2022 - Project Kickstart

March 2022 - Mapping and development of the system to gather data from all Brazilian government data sources

April 2022 - Applications and tests of machine learning to crunch data, organizing an internal database with expenses

May 2022- System integration tests with the Passkit API for sending notifications to mobile wallets

June 2022 - Beta test to fix bugs and crashes

July 2022- Beta test / Launch campaign development

August 2022 - UX design tweaks and refinements

September 2022- Official launch / Campaign release

October 2022 - Minor bug fixes

First week of January 2023 - Update to include newly elected congress members' cards

Third week of January 2023 - Update to include former President Jair Bolsonaro's hidden spending history

The Transparency Card is not an app, nor a webapp. It is an innovation that uses a feature native to phones, the mobile wallet, transforming them into a tool against corruption.

Visit cartaodatransparencia.com and add the cards of the politicians you want to watch to your wallet. From then on, you will receive real-time notifications on your phone whenever they spend taxpayer's money.

Since under Brazilian law politicians' spending data is open — but intentionally complex and hard to access — we created a system connected in real-time with multiple official government databases, gathering unstructured data about more than 500 politicians.

Upon detecting the expense in real-time, it delivers detailed information to Brazilians in the most straightforward possible format: a push notification directly to their phone's wallet.

Using a PassKit integration API to deliver information through user wallets has allowed us to create a digital experience similar to top banks, promoting continuous public money monitoring. People are already familiar with tracking their spending through real-time phone notifications, so this feature encourages constant vigilance.

So far, more than 430K active cards are in mobile wallets, and 20MM notifications have been sent.

Congresso em Foco simplified and democratized access to complex data, transforming every Brazilian with a phone into a potential watchdog over public money - becoming even more relevant as a media channel.

According to Contagious, Transparency Card "Empowers a nation to monitor politicians and not blindly trust those in power."

The innovation also served as an investigative source for journalists who wrote news based on the expenses exposed by the platform.

One of the biggest Brazilian activist movements, Projetemos, organically supported the innovation and spread the word about it in more than 15 state capitals.

As an innovation that exposes politicians, Transparency Card has faced several attempts at hacker attacks, which was expected due to the messy Brazilian political scenario.

The Transparency Card was launched in September 2022, weeks before the national elections — In Brazil, election years are historically years in which politicians spend larger amounts of public money in questionable or even corrupt ways.

This particular election was even more tense when it came to that matter, because the president's party had passed a law of 100 years of secrecy, protecting his information from going public and causing great dissatisfaction amongst the population.

When this data was being kept from the public by the president, the use of data to provide more information to the citizens about politicians was a pivotal way of empowering them to claim for transparency.