I work in the credit finance space. The first thing that jumps out to me is the security and privacy of people's credit data details. There is a lot of personal information that could be used for stealing one's identity. What assurances are there that this data is protected and anonymous?
If this is really ‘open’, how we can access submitted data?
Otherwise comments here about this project funded by competitor is making this a bit fishy.
FYI in case you speak German, this project is currently all over the news in Germany, causing quite a stir.
TV http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/schufa-101.html https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/sendungen/wdr-aktuell/vi... https://www.n-tv.de/ratgeber/Aktivisten-wollen-Schufa-Code-k...
Online https://www.wired.de/collection/life/openschufa-macht-bonita... http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/service/kreditwuerdigkeit-w... https://www.golem.de/news/openschufa-reverse-engineering-der... https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/OpenSCHUFA-Projekt-w... https://www.gruenderszene.de/allgemein/openschufa-algorithmu... https://www.futurezone.de/netzpolitik/article213448091/OpenS... https://netzpolitik.org/2018/jetzt-mitmachen-wir-knacken-die...
most motivational video, ever https://youtu.be/HBsD8BdXSCY
2 current related article worth reading http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/regierungsberater-gerd... http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/dass-wir-ueberwach...
(disclaimer I'm part of the team)
I'd love to understand what you expect to find (given that you might have some special insight into credit scoring). I'd guess that the "algorithm" could be an embarrassingly simple sum of thumbs up/down for a handful of items. Like: If a person lives in a thumbsup/thumbsdown/nothumbs neighborhood etc.
Next target: Fair, Isaac. Perhaps the OpenSCHUFA project can be convinced to take on Fair, Isaac next.
Might be worth noting that OpenSCHUFA has some ties to the Bertelsmann Foundation, which owns Arvato Infoscore, a SCHUFA competitor.
SCHUFA is demanding a passport copy from EU citizens to obtain the annual unpaid data overview report. A citizen of an EU country residing in Germany is under no obligation to hold a passport. I don't understand how until now no one torn the SCHUFA credit bureau into pieces over it.
When applying for a loan, mobile phone contract, or even trying to rent an apartment in Germany, the Schufa score - Germany's credit rating - is decisive. If you have a few "points" too little, your application is refused. (Computer says "No" to your new smartphone or apartment.) However, the calculation of these credit scores - done by the private Schufa company - is fully intransparent. The formula is a trade secret, and as such not open to the public.
We want to change this intransparency with the project OpenSCHUFA. Open Knowledge Foundation together with AlgorithmWatch want to reconstruct the Schufa algorithm with "reverse engineering".
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Reading the funding goals[0] I don't understand why there is a funding goal of 30k to develop... an OCR app?
Wouldn't it make more sense, from both financial and technical standpoint to accept raw images then do the OCR server side? Server side OCR probably has more resources, and can utilize better OCR software. And you can re-run it after some time on every image if the results aren't that accurate.
[0] - https://www.startnext.com/openschufa