Last spring, Bilot and The National Audit Office of Finland (NAOF) developed the Risk Detector tool as part of the BilotGo hackathon as an aid to auditors. Risk Detector has attracted plenty of international attention during the course of the year. Many countries struggle with similar challenges in the monitoring of government spending, and Risk Detector has been presented for example to the Supreme Audit Offices of Sweden, Norway and Brazil and to representatives of the European Court of Auditors.
Risk Detector is a tool which utilizes network analysis and artificial intelligence to help design and implement audit work. The tool visualizes government procurement networks and uses artificial intelligence to highlight vendors with profiles that stand out in some way. In this way, with the help of artificial intelligence, auditors can gain new perspectives on the movement of public money.
“The tool gives us the opportunity to look at the subject from multiple angles, and that’s exactly what we were looking for,” praises NAOF project advisor Jasmin Grünbaum.
Risk Detector’s victory march is now continuing across the ocean, as Bilot and NAOF have been invited by the Comptroller General of the Republic of Peru to present the tool at the International Annual Conference for Integrity in Lima on December 3rd. Bilot’s Data Scientist Lauri Nurmela and NAOF’s Jasmin Grünbaum will discuss Risk Detector as part of a panel discussion on bribery and collusion control and detection mechanisms for public officials.
“It is clear the ideas implemented so far are just scratching the surface. The approach we have developed can be applied to so many different contexts, which I’m sure was also noticed by the Peruvians when we introduced the tool. It could even be applied to detecting and preventing criminal networks or black market activity, for example,” muses Lauri.
