The document summarizes an initiative in Montenegro called "Be Responsible" which allows citizens to report irregularities like cash register violations, illegal work, and consumer rights issues via a mobile app or website. Citizens provide details of the incident like location, time, and description. Reports are forwarded to inspection authorities and investigation results are published. Half the fines collected are invested in community projects like medical equipment, daily centers for children with disabilities, park reconstruction after fires, and reconstructing a home for the elderly.
2. IDEA & TEAM MEMBERS
“Open ideas for Montenegro” - competition
PhD Igor Radusinović
PhD Slobodan Đukanović
PhD Vesna Popović-Bugarin
PhD Nikola Žarić
Damira Kalač
Soko Divanović
Filip Radenović
Stefan Vujović Nikola Bulatović
8. WHAT HAPPENS WITH CITIZENS’ REPORTS
?
REPORT IS NOT
SUFFICIENT
FOR DECLARING
THE
FINE
TO START
INVESTIGATION
DEPARTMENT
OF PUBLIC
REVENUES
ADMINISTRATIO
N
FOR
INSPECTION
AFFAIRS
ALL REPORTS ARE
FORWARDED TO
INSPECTION
AUTHORITIES
THE RESULT OF
INVESTIGATION IS
THEN
PUBLISHED ON “BE
RESPONSIBLE” WEB
SITE AND
APPLICATIONS
IT IS A REASON FOR
INSPECTION
9. ALL REPORTS, FINES, CITIZENS’ COMMENTS ARE TRANSPARENTLY PUBLISHED ON
“BE RESPONSIBLE” WEBSITE AND APPLICATIONS.
THE RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION
14. GATHERED MONEY FROM FINES
459 000 €
229 500 €
Half of it is redirected to community goods
Total revenues from fines
15. WHERE DID WE INVEST 1o
Medical
equipment
for children
hospital
in clinical
center of
Montenegro
50 000 €
16. WHERE DID WE INVEST 2o
Daily centers
for children
with disabilities
in Cetinje,
Nikšić
and Plav
50 000 €
17. WHERE DID WE INVEST 3o
Park
Ćemovsko polje
in Podgorica
affected
by fires
50 000 €
18. WHERE DID WE INVEST 4o
Reconstruction
of the home
for the elderly
in Risan
50 000 €
Editor's Notes
Idea for Be responsible application started with ICT competition “Open ideas for Montenegro” which promoted transparency and responsibility of MNE society and Government institutions.
Team members of BR applications are mainly from Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Podgorica. There are 4 professors, 4 post-graduated students and one journalist.
Idea was to build applications which will make easier interaction between society and institutions in order to prevent and resolve problems which MNE society faces in everyday life.
In order to resolve some of these problems we came to an idea to make an app for reporting different categories of problems such as:
Ecology , Parking, Misuse of government vehicles, Road damages
and the last but the most important
Grey economy
On December 2013, the government supported our project and then we started campaign “Be responsible. It’s up to you. Zero grey economy.”.
The purpose of the campaign is to get public institutions, academic community and citizens of Montenegro to work together and tackle one of the nation’s biggest economic problems – the informal (grey) economy.
Since then, we decided to put attention to three subcategories of Grey economy.
These are:
Fake cash register receipts
Illegal work (Black market)
Violation of consumers rights
There are many ways to file a report. These are:
Mobile application Be responsible, developed for Android and iOS platforms
Website
Call centers of the inspections
Each report must be comprised of some fundamental details like
Location
Time and date
Description
And optionally photo
of the irregularity
Here is presented a process od reporting problem by mobile applications. The details of the report, that i mentioned in previous slide, are easily sent through the report form in the applications. In this slide there is example of Android application, but iOS app is almost the same.
The same procces is valid for the website like it is presented on slide.
After reporting the problem through the apps and website, the reports are forwarded to the inspection authorities.
We started the colaboration with
Department of public revenue and
Administration for inspection affairs in Montenegro
So the all reports are forwarded to one of them.
The very important part of processing the report is that the report is not sufficient for declaring the fine, it is just the reason for inspections to start investigation upon that report.
After the investigation of the inspections, the results of their work are published on site and apps.
All the reports, fines and users comments are transparently visible on site and applications and every citizen can easily see it. This is how citizens can see how the institutions are devoted to resolving their problems and how they can contribute to make society life better and more transparent.
There was a voting during December and January, and everyone who reported problem from grey economy could chose one of community good from our short list, and at the end we made a short list of 4 community projects where the collected money would be invested to.