K-Monitor was founded in 2007 by young volunteers as a grass roots initiative and has developed to Hungary’s main civic tech group and top anti-corruption NGO.
K-Monitor strives against corruption and promotes the transparency of public spending. It operates open databases, develops civic tech tools, conducts research and advocates for legal reform.
We at K-Monitor firmly believe that corruption is a problem that affects all parts of the society and harms everyone regardless of their beliefs, ethnicity, gender or political orientation. It not only causes enormous economic harm, but also undermines trust in institutions and opens doors for populists and political adventurers. It endangers democracies and also hurts people in regions where good governance would be must to eliminate hunger, poverty and violence. The best antidote against corruption is a society where citizen have a feeling of ownership over institutions and actively shape their environment. Principles of our operation are openness, independence and a critical approach.
K-Monitor database (http://k-monitor.hu/adatbazis) is huge library and map of public spending in Hungary used by 35k visitors a month. It is available as a website and a mobile app.
The Red Flags project (http://redflags.eu), carried out in co-operation with Transparency International, is an open source risk indicator system based on algorithms that helps to identify and prevent risky public procurements and is mainly used by journalists and procurement experts.
In co-operation with our partners, we have established a minimum program against corruption (http://onkormanyzatok.ezaminimum.hu) to encourage political decision-makers to make commitments for the next legislative period. Currently we are cooperating with local representatives to work jointly on transparency and participation on the municipal level. With our support one local government has opened up its budget to introduce participatory budgeting, this would be the first such project in Hungary.
„Be smart with data!” is a project of K-Monitor funded by the Norway Grants dealing with the use of open data. The aim of the project is to promote and encourage the use of data and technology in the Hungarian civil society, and to develop CSOs’ capacities in working and communicating with data. The program has been further developed into the Code for Hungary movement.
In our advocacy activities we work on issues such as political finance, asset declarations, whistleblower protection, public procurement, freedom of information, lobbying and local governance & civic participation.
Research, advocacy and technology development in issues such as access to information, tracking of public spending, public procurement, political finance, whistleblowing, participation.
Our activities were supported by OSF, CEE Trust, EU, Visegrad Fund, Norway Grants, Google, TechSoup and individual donors. Our international partners have been among others: The EngineRoom, Huridocs, Open Knowledge Foundation, Transparency International and the TransparenCEE Network. Our annual budget has varied between 80k USD and 150k USD in the last years
