"Politically Exposed Persons" refers to individuals who play important public roles, such as politicians, judges, or prominent businesspeople.  How to monitor the activities of politically exposed persons has become an important subject of anti-corruption research and journalism.  In the era of social networks and large datasets, this work often requires new methods for understanding complex financial and political relationships.

"Monitoring Politically Exposed Persons" was a workshop conducted in late 2017 by the Engine Room, an NGO dedicated to technical training and capacity building among journalists and civil society groups.  The work was sponsored by The American Assembly's Influence Mapping project, which worked to build capacities to analyze and share large social network datasets for research and investigative work.

The growth of 'data journalism' has introduced a wide range of new methods into investigative work, from the analysis of social networks to the datamining of large collections of documents.  With these new methods come new challenges, including access to data, the quality and usability of analytical tools, and strategies for sharing data across projects. Solving some of these problems will require a new generation of software. Others will require different ways of working together.

The Tools for Investigative Journalism workshop brought together thirty journalists and developers to advance the state of the art around these tools, including social network mapping and datamining tools.  The group met at City University in London, September 21st-22nd, 2015.  Participating organizations included OpenCorporates, Poderopedia, OCCRP, Overview, Littlesis, the Guardian, and the BBC.

The workshop is part of the Influence Mapping project organized by The American Assembly.

Links:

Workshop Presentations and Summaries