If you see corruption, voice it here.
OVOVTEC, which stands for “One Village, One Volunteer: Trained, Educated, and Community-Centered, Citizen Confronting Corruption in Construction,” is a youth-led, citizen-driven oversight platform aimed at improving the transparency of the Philippine government’s construction projects.
Behind OVOVTEC
Gian Alingog graduated from high school as the Computer Science awardee in 2023 from Ateneo de Manila, and is the silver medalist at the national computer science competition by www.noi.ph. Now, as a Computer Science major at the University of California, he wants to use technology to solve the problems of the poor and to create socially impactful projects such as www.ovovtec.org, which helps in eradicating corruption.
“When I sat down to chat with my father about unfinished flood control projects back home in the Philippines, I learned how government funds often vanished into thin air. Discovering these “ghost projects” (constructions paid for but never built) inspired me to make a change. As a Computer Science major at the University of California, I set out to make use of my skills by building OVOVTEC, a platform leveraging communal efforts to shine light on public infrastructure projects. With corruption scandals making headlines and citizens taking to the streets in protest, OVOVTEC’s mission could not be more timely.”
What is OVOVTEC? How does it work?
It works by recruiting trusted local representatives to become an OVOVTEC expert; of course, each expert undergoes an application and vetting process before joining OVOVTEC officially, ensuring they are trustworthy community members. Once onboard, it becomes their responsibility to document the public construction projects in their town by uploading photos, videos, and other evidence via a webapp. The expert then objectively tags the status of the project as either “up to standard,” “substandard,” or a “ghost project.” This simple but effective classification instantly signals to citizens whether a project appears properly executed, shows signs of corner-cutting, or might not exist at all. For example, a bridge built to specifications would be marked “up to standard,” a shoddy barangay hall with cracks might be flagged “substandard,” and an entirely missing or never-started project would be labeled a “ghost project.” By structuring reports this way, OVOVTEC builds a crowdsourced and decentralized database for infrastructure integrity and can act as a secondary source of truth to complement official government records.
Crucially, OVOVTEC is not limited to the experts alone. Everyday citizens can access the platform as guest users to see the reports and updates posted by the experts in any region. They may also leave comments, ask questions, and upvote or downvote posts based on the credibility of the evidence and analysis provided by the experts. This community feedback loop helps surface the most reliable reports and encourages healthy scrutiny. All in all, OVOVTEC creates a public forum where infrastructure projects are continuously audited by the people, for the people to grow and emphasize the need for transparency and accountability, especially within our government.
The Big Picture with AI
While human eyes on the ground are the cornerstone of OVOVTEC’s approach, the platform also looks to the future with artificial intelligence. All the photos, videos, and project data collected are not only archived, they are being used to train a machine learning model capable of automatically evaluating construction quality. In early iterations, this AI will be trained on a substantial dataset of example projects that have been labeled by our experts. Over time, as more reports pour in, the model will keep learning from new cases. Our long-term vision is ambitious: eventually, an OVOVTEC user could simply take a few photos of a newly built structure, upload it, and let the AI determine if it meets standards or shows red flags. With the use of AI validation on top of community reporting, OVOVTEC can scale its oversight to thousands of projects efficiently.
It is important to note that this AI assist is not meant to completely replace human judgment, but to support it. In the platform’s early stages, the AI’s assessments will remain behind the scenes; only when it has achieved high accuracy will it be used to validate reports automatically. At that stage, the hope is that even in remote areas without a local expert, an ordinary citizen’s photo upload could immediately get a preliminary assessment from the AI, thereby making our anti-corruption technology more accessible.
Have feedback or ideas?
I’d love to hear from you. Your input helps shape what we build next.