Ukrainian city invents fake hackathon to climb transparency ranking

The Transparent Cities program by Transparency International Ukraine has revoked its 2024 decision to recognize Ternopil as a "transparent" city due to fraud.

The program’s website reports this, and a new ranking is scheduled to be published on May 19.

As part of the preparation in December 2024, special evaluation questionnaires were sent to the Ternopil City Council.

In its response, the City Council stated that the Open Data Hackathon would be held in August 2024 and included a link to a news item about it on its website.

However, upon verification, analysts found no evidence of the hackathon—no announcements, program, photo reports, or information about participants.

Using the Wayback Machine, it was discovered that the provided link had previously displayed a completely unrelated news item—about the schedule of classes for seniors at the Ternopil City Territorial Center.

The City Council appears to have altered the news article to score points for the "availability of news about open data initiatives" indicator, which was assessed in the Open Data Pulse ranking.

Ternopil City Council acknowledged "submitting incorrect references" but denied any falsification.

"Unfortunately, the Ternopil City Council has proven to be a rather weak institution, and its actions may be interpreted as a deliberate (political?) attempt to support falsifications for the sake of higher rankings," reads a statement on the Transparent Cities program website.

As a result, it was decided not to grant Ternopil the status of a "transparent city" in the new ranking.

In 2024, Ternopil was one of five Ukrainian cities recognized as "transparent" in the Transparency International Ukraine ranking.