Can ‘nudging’ arrest corruption?

Can ‘nudging’ arrest corruption? | Daily Tribune

In a more liberal democratic milieu, there ought to be neither legal barrier nor threat against any citizen in the body polity “nudging” a public official who leaves corruption footprints while in office and beyond.

The emerging contemporary buzzword, “corruption,” is taking pitch in social and political circles that it might tend to become a lofty objective to be unrelentingly condemned whenever it rears its ugly head. If only an AI-mediated monitoring had already been invented, the anti-corruption drive could have significantly weaponized our limited pool of forensic accountants, inspector-engineers, and hardline good governance advocates.

In altruism, it’s entirely foolish for a corrupt and wicked public official to think that his act is not readily seen at eye level nor captured by word of mouth in the workplace. For the longest time, the flip side of corruption might have been eclipsed by the concept of order than of morality.

As one Arundhati Roy should remind us, viz: “Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers?” Interestingly, Kash Pramod Patel in his book, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, made this point likewise: “That means the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency.”

“Nudging” as being a “choice architecture,” it should be asked whether “ethical prompts” can stop corruption. To begin with, what impact, if any, can nudges have upon our bureaucrats or public officials, be they appointive or elective?

According to John Beshears and Harry Kosowsky, “Nudges influence behavior by changing the environment in which decisions are made, without restricting the menu of options and without altering financial incentives.”

If one looks at corruption through a child’s eyes, the mind might ponder to ask: where are all the funds hidden?

It is as if the political “universe” is created by some evil genius in such instances, viz: a) employing “piggybanking” as a method of budgeting with acronyms like AICS, AKAP, TUPAD, MAIP, and other variants as contemptible motivators; b) inserting into DPWH’s bloodstream funds purportedly for flood control works (i.e., P348 billion for 2025 alone); and c) making the notions of ayuda and payola interchangeable. All these create an ecosystem conducive to fraud, bribery, theft, embezzlement, illicit financing, money laundering, etc.

It’s a tad difficult to think as healthy signs of good governance the two recent acts of the President, namely: 1) when he ordered the courtesy resignations of all presidential appointees under the guise of evaluating their performance as to who stays or who goes; and 2) his SoNA-delivered articulation amounting to a crackdown on flood control corruption or against those who profited immensely from such infrastructure projects. But upon whose ears should the tagline — “Mahiya naman kayo” –- fall when the corruption spiraled out of control under this President’s watch?

If we take a sneak peek into the last three years of DPWH allocations for flood management, here are the uptrend figures, to wit: 2022 = P129 billion; 2023 = P183 billion; 2024 = P245 billion; and 2025 = P348 billion.

According to the IBON Foundation, these epic sums were “widely suspected to be for pork barrel projects,” which means presumably to line the pockets of wicked politicians. Amid all this, is there anything that data science as an emerging young discipline can do to be of any value or to inform public policy?

Theoretically, it serves as a powerful toolkit, rubric if you will, since in leveraging data, policymakers can better understand societal challenges, conceive of effective solutions, and ideally, erect a fully transparent and accountable government.

Ironically, in the case of crucial agricultural development approaches, research outputs foregrounded by scientists are swept into the dustbin of oblivion, despite us always hearing officialdom as though dependent upon “doing the science” prior to any policy implementation.

Let nudging pierce the thin veil of impunity where corruption thrives!