COA wins international software competition

Elizabeth Marcelo (The Philippine Star) – January 26, 2021 – 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Audit (COA) has won the first international competition on audit software development organized by the Audit Board of Indonesia to commemorate its 74th founding anniversary.

The COA’s three-member team won first place for the professional category of the “Hackathon Badan Pemerika Keuangan or BPK” competition with its software designed to monitor, evaluate and report government infrastructure projects.

Bukan Samsan Tech and Kaes STAT-BPK of Indonesia placed second and third, respectively.

The BPK contest, with the theme “Hack for Accountability and Transparency” was opened to all member-countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The competition had two categories: professionals and students.

The competition aims to encourage the development of softwares that can assist in audit works and enhance public awareness on the importance of accountability.

The COA team was composed of Gerald Mendeja, Jewelle Caezar Gadiano and Marwin de Guzman, all from the agency’s Information Technology Office.

The team’s winning entry was the Project Reporting of Infrastructure Schedule Monitoring System or PRISM, a software application designed for monitoring, evaluation and reporting of government infrastructure projects through different platforms such as web and mobile.

Mendeja, who served as the team leader, said PRISM uses different technologies to capture government infrastructure data, which can be used by state auditors.

“The idea of PRISM will promote accountability and transparency through the collection of audit-related data for analytical reports and visualization. Similar to the concept of prism in science, PRISM signifies transparent elements that will refract data to produce a useful display of reports and visuals for decision making and public use,” Mendeja said during his presentation of the project for final judging.

“And with the current pandemic, PRISM will be helpful in remote audit,” he added.

Mendeja said the poject features web application, mobile application, dashboard and analytics, geotagging and capturing, public engagement and public web portal. It also has an open data-sharing feature.

The final judging of entries was held in Jakarta, Indonesia on Jan. 12 and 13.