Our target was the Czech national character that shaped 45 years of communism. The era when politicians dictated what to think and how to behave. And every disobedience was heavily punished. The authoritarianism of the government survives to this day. People do not believe that their voice can change the confident actions of politicians.

The anticorruption Hackathon brought IT specialists together while being supported by a whole country to fight the corrupted system.

Politicians in the Czech Republic got used to thinking that they can get away with almost anything. The last drop on the list of corruption scandals was an overpriced e-shop for highway vignettes. The contract for Asseco Group to build an e-commerce platform (for selling highway vignettes) was worth 16 000 000 EUR without an open bid. This extremely overpriced contract got the attention of the anticorruption group Znamkamarada, who made an open call and organized the anticorruption hackathon. They invited programmers from the whole country to build the e-commerce platform in 48h and for free, in order to show how ridiculous the overpriced contract was.

The creative idea was to fight the corrupted system in a very straightforward way. There was a suspicious contract costing taxpayers 16 000 000 EUR and politicians tried to justify it by saying that it is a complex problem needing a complex and expensive IT solution. So, we brought together IT specialists as volunteers and announced that they would deliver a modern and professional solution in 48 hours. And give it to the state for free. And moreover, everybody can join in and everybody can watch.

Tomas Vondracek (representing Znamkamarada group) made a call to action with a LinkedIn post as a reaction to overpriced contract. He made an open call for volunteers from IT and announced to build together a solution to show that 16 000 000 EUR was ridiculously overpriced.

His post got the attention of thousands of relevant people from the field, and, moreover, attracted the media and attention of the prime minister within a couple of hours. After that, the prime minister called for a meeting. Politicians in the Czech Republic had never talked to ordinary people before or took their opinions in consideration.

The anticorruption hackathon Znamkamarada challenged the suspicious and overpriced contract for 16 000 000 EUR to build an e-commerce platform (for selling highway vignettes). To prove their point, they made an open call for IT volunteers to build the system by themselves in 48 hours and for free.

The story attracted all media and therefore the whole country was watching the whole event nonstop.

The prime minister called for meeting.

The Minister of Transportation was fired.

A new law for IT contracts was created.

Similar activities from other groups challenging other issues followed.

The state contract in the amount of 16,000,000 EUR was canceled.

The contract was then re-announced and purchased for 5,000,000 EUR.

Total savings of taxpayers' funds - 11,000,000 EUR.

Czech society has been fighting the stigma of 45 years of communism. We tried to give people, who thought that have no power over the corrupted system, a strong voice that needed to be heard.