The first application in the Czech Republic, thanks to which it is possible to analyze in detail the transparent accounts of political parties, cities or public figures, was created by Jakub Janeček, a student from FIT CTU. The application provides clear and detailed information on account movements, names of contributors, income and expenditure amounts, as well as balances. The application was created in the faculty’s OpenDataLab, which the faculty runs together with Profinit.
The “Transparentní účty” app was created as a solution to the bachelor thesis of Jakub Janeček in the FIT CTU OpenDataLab. The application was created during last year’s Czech presidential election campaigns when the candidates’ transparent accounts were closely monitored. Jakub only had a lot of data in spreadsheets, which he converted into the first Czech application for processing transparent accounts, where all the data was in one place.
“When analyzing existing solutions to the bachelor thesis assignment, I found that no publicly available tool in the Czech environment would deal with the processing or analysis of data from transparent accounts. At the same time, a large number of entities are involved in monitoring events on transparent accounts, especially during election campaigns,” Jakub Janeček described his work and added: “The most difficult, but at the same time, the funniest part was implementing the data retrieval from the banks’ websites, because each bank does it in a completely different way.”
Transparent bank accounts are publicly displayed on the banks’ websites, and anyone can monitor what is happening there. These accounts typically contain a large number of transactions, and it can be, therefore, challenging to process the information. The developed application offers clear information on transparent accounts from all supported banks. There are currently three supported banks – Česká spořitelna, Fio banka and Komerční banka. Information about transparent accounts is automatically updated every day. Anyone can use the application; it is freely available.
“I plan to add support for more banks and would also like to see suggestions from real users. The app is open-source, so anyone interested can participate in the development,” Jakub Janeček said about his future plans.
Some media have already used the data generated during the app’s development in real life, and it has helped highlight the lack of transaction descriptions in one bank’s transparent accounts.
