Corruption is just a fancy word for theft.
When you misappropriate flood control funds for your own good, it is corruption.
When you take that extra receipt to reimburse for expenses you did not spend, it is corruption.
When you pick up two relief packs when the allocation is only one per person, it is corruption.
It is too ingrained in our system and culture that everyday “silly” acts can be overlooked.
It is not to say that the small things are as harmful as the big things because when activities scale up, they become more impactful, they hurt, pain, and damage more people and begin to compromise lives. If you host a campaign to promise honesty and service, but instead, become two-faced in proclaiming integrity while robbing the nation of its hard-earned money and well-deserved services, it is the worst corruption.
But, it’s really not that complicated. Corruption is cured by integrity, and integrity is facilitated by transparency, and transparency is efficiently brought to life by technology.
But technology is not the solution because it only solves the lack of efficiency; it cannot solve the lack of integrity. Without integrity, technology will just be another bridge that will collapse and reveal another creative and brilliant scheme to go around the loopholes of laws and protocols.
Technology can help the most honest man to efficiently solve corruption, in the same way technology can help the most corrupt man to efficiently achieve corruption. But an honest man can solve corruption while using pen and paper, too; only slower.
At the end of the day, technology is just a tool.
And corruption happens not only on a national scale, but in the smallest institutions too.
Technology can help, but it does not need a rocket scientist to figure out that integrity, transparency, and will are the true solutions to combat corruption.