The Transparent Accounts application was created as a solution to the bachelor thesis of Jakub Janeček in the OpenDataLab of FIT CTU. The application was created during last year's presidential election campaigns, when the transparent accounts of candidates were closely monitored. Jakub had only a lot of data in spreadsheets, which he converted into the first Czech application for processing transparent accounts, where all the data is clearly in one place.
"When analysing existing solutions to the bachelor thesis assignment, I found that there is no publicly available tool in the Czech environment that would deal with the processing or analysis of data from transparent accounts. A large number of entities are involved in monitoring what happens on transparent accounts, especially during election campaigns," Jakub Janeček describes his work and adds: "The most difficult but at the same time the most fun part was implementing the data acquisition from the banks' websites, as 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 normally contain a large number of transactions and it can be very difficult 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. The application can be used by anyone, it is freely available.
"I plan to add support for other banks and I would also like to see suggestions from real users. The application is open-source, so anyone who is interested can join the development," says Jakub Janeček about his future plans.
The data generated during the development of the app has already been used in real life by some media outlets and has helped to highlight the lack of transaction descriptions in one of the banks' transparent accounts.
