The fight against corruption in Kazakhstan has long resembled a battle with a hydra: two new heads grow in place of one severed head.

High–profile arrests, stricter laws, and the creation of new departments are all insufficient measures, as life shows.

The problem is that we persist in fighting the symptoms, not the disease itself.

Imagine corruption as a colony of harmful microbes. It thrives not because individual "microbes" are bad, but because an ideal breeding ground has been created for them: opacity, complexity of procedures and, most importantly, the right of an official to make a subjective decision. We are trying to remove this colony with "toxic chemicals" – point arrests, which, of course, destroy individual "microbes", but do not change the environment itself. And new ones inevitably come in their place.

The real solution lies not in the plane of new punishments, but in changing the environment itself. And today, in the 21st century, the most effective tool for this is not in the offices of investigators, but in the hands of AstanaHub residents. It's time to stop patching holes and build a new, open digital system in which corruption becomes technically impossible. This is not a political slogan, but a specific engineering task.

At the heart of any domestic corruption is the human factor – the right of an official at his discretion to speed up or slow down the process, to allow or refuse. To eliminate this problem, it is necessary not to re-educate the official, but to exclude him from the equation wherever possible. Here are three technological pillars on which such a state can stand.

Pillar No. 1: Artificial intelligence as an impartial performer

The root of the evil lies in the subjective right to a decision. The solution is to cancel it. All routine processes for the distribution of public goods should be transferred from a person to a machine.

• How it works: It's not the official who decides who gets a preferential loan, a place in a kindergarten, or a building permit. This is done by an Artificial Intelligence algorithm. It analyzes the applicant's data according to clear, pre-published and understandable rules. He has no cronies, brothers, or desire to get a "kickback." He just executes the code.
• The new role of a civil servant: A person ceases to be a "decider". His new, much more important role is the controller and auditor of the system. He is responsible for the quality and correctness of the data that the machine receives, and analyzes the adequacy of its decisions, intervening only in truly exceptional, non-standard situations that require human judgment. He serves a system that serves the people.

Pillar No. 2: Big Data and predictive analytics as a "digital auditor"

Major corruption is tricky and leaves complex, intricate traces. But in the world of big data, any trace, even the most intricate, is just a pattern that can be detected.

• How it works: A single government analytical platform is being created that integrates data from disparate databases in real time: tax, customs, registers of movable and immovable property, and data on public procurement.
• The principle of operation: The system does not just store data, it constantly analyzes it in search of anomalies. For example, it automatically compares the official income of an official and his immediate family with their actual expenses and purchases. If the system detects that the family of a civil servant in charge of tenders is suddenly buying property worth ten times their total income over five years, it automatically generates a detailed analytical report and sends it to the authorized body. This is not a "witch hunt," but a work on specific, mathematically sound "red flags."

Pillar #3: Radical transparency through open digital registries

Trust is the foundation of any state. In the digital world, trust is ensured by ensuring that data cannot be secretly changed or deleted.

• How it works: All key actions of the state – from budget transactions to registration of land rights – must be recorded in special secure digital registers with integrity control. Each such record receives a unique cryptographic signature and an accurate timestamp. It cannot be forged or "retroactively edited" imperceptibly. This ensures absolute accountability and ensures that everyone sees the same version of the truth.
• The key to success: All non-confidential data from these registries should be available in real time to any citizen, journalist or activist through open APIs (software interfaces). This will allow the IT community to create its own services for monitoring government spending, queue tracking, or monitoring road construction. The state becomes "transparent by default," and public control turns from a slogan into a working tool.

Ideas are worthless without implementation. Idle chatter on forums and meetings will not change the country. Concrete, pragmatic actions are needed.

1. Creation of the state "Task Force". Instead of a regular meeting, the Government should form several elite target teams based on AstanaHub from the best developers and analysts. They need to set a specific task (for example, "launch an AI pilot module for the allocation of SME grants in 90 days"), allocate a budget and give full authority to access the data. Tight deadlines and measurable results are the main KPIs.
2. The state contract for the result. It is necessary to change the very principle of public procurement in IT. To announce contests not for "creating a program", but for "achieving an anti-corruption effect". A million-dollar contract is awarded not to the one who offered a beautiful presentation, but to the one who can prove that his decision, for example, reduced the average service delivery time from 30 to 2 days or reduced losses in drug purchases by 15%. Payment is made upon completion of the goal.
3. The legislative mandate for "algorithmization". We need a political will that is fixed on paper. The government should develop and adopt a clear roadmap according to which, by a certain date (for example, by 2030), at least 70% of all standard government decisions should be made exclusively by algorithms, without human involvement.

Let's return to our analogy. The construction of the open digital system described above is a total change in the "environment". In a transparent, logical and thoroughly verifiable ecosystem, where every action leaves an indelible digital footprint, corrupt "microbes" simply do not have enough oxygen to live. Bribery is becoming not just dangerous, but technically meaningless.

This is not a fantasy from the future. All these technologies already exist. Their implementation is not a matter of faith, but a matter of engineering will and professionalism. And you, the IT community, are the bearers of this professionalism in Kazakhstan. It's time to stop waiting for political solutions and start offering technological solutions.

It's time to write the code that will change the country.