We’re pleased to announce our winners: Steven Baguma and runner up Madhumita D. Mitra. We also offer our thanks to everyone who participated in the Global Integrity Mashup Challenge.

Read the winners here:

• In Rwanda, Ominous Signs of Authoritarianism
• India’s Anti-Corruption Agency in the Global Integrity Report 2009
  

The winning posts used data from the Global Integrity Report to illustrate their views on the most timely corruption issues in their respective countries: consolidation of power in Rwanda and ineffective anticorruption systems in India.

The Mashup Challenge was a call for critical pieces, created by activists, academics, and journalists, and informed by Global Integrity data. Global Integrity’s hundreds of thousands of data points and thousands of words of original reporting can serve as a launching point for timely analysis of issues impacting citizens every day.

This year’s Mashup Challenge entries proved this as they took up a wide variety of causes. For instance, one entry calls for Kenyans to use the economic downturn and forthcoming tax reform as an opportunity to call for greater accountability and local oversight of government funds, while another spoke to perpetual oppression of the Roma in Europe. Due to the high quality displayed in all the entries, we had to make a tough decision when awarding our cash prizes. We used a general set of scoring criteria but compared pieces to successful work in that genre — for example, opinion pieces were compared to the best opinion pieces, academic research to academic research and so on.

In the end, our jury chose Steven Baguma’s piece on Rwanda as the 2010 winner and Madhumita D. Mitra’s piece on India’s Anti-Corruption Commission as this year’s runner up. Congratulations to both Madhumita and Steven!

Why they won…

Steven critiques some of Global Integrity’s findings on freedoms of media and expression using current events and news reports to illustrate a growing censorship of opposition voice. You can read Steven’s entry on our blog. We really liked that Stephen’s piece took one set of findings — our generally positive assessment of institutional frameworks — and added his own observations to recast the whole picture as something much more troubling. It’s a perfect example of one of our constant refrains: no single assessment can give you a complete understanding.

Madhumita dove into the Global Integrity Report: India, choosing to focus on the findings related to the anti-corruption commission. However, she did not stop at the India scorecard, but brought in Global Integrity data from a variety of countries to illustrate her point that many times large, bureaucratic anti-corruption institutions score lower in effectiveness than more decentralized systems. You can read Madhumita’s analysis here.

We want to send thanks again to all who participated in the Mashup Challenge.

Even though the official “challenge” is over, we want to continue to encourage practitioners, within and outside the anti-corruption community, to dig into Global Integrity’s data and put it to use. We have scorecards on countries far and wide on the basics of governance and democracy. While our indicators certainly don’t cover it all, chances are that Global Integrity data can provide context to some aspect of your work.

The only question is: What is the issue you care most about? And how can we help? We’re alsways happy to talk, so comment here or email us at info@globalintegrity.org for more specific recommendations.

— Norah Mallaney