Media Party, the global organization trusted for accelerating media innovation projects worldwide, announced today a major partnership with the World Bank to launch the Data 360 Global Digital Challenge. This initiative calls on journalists, developers, entrepreneurs, and technologists around the world to develop next-generation verification technologies that strengthen information integrity.
The challenge responds to the current global crisis of trust and the proliferation of sophisticated digital manipulation. To achieve this, participants must create tools that utilize the World Bank’s Data360 API—a comprehensive source of official development data—as a fundamental baseline to authenticate information and restore public trust.
“This initiative represents a new and dynamic approach to becoming a better ‘knowledge bank’, driving the use of Data360 by technologists, news media, think tanks, and developers worldwide, with a strong emphasis on data quality, authoritative sourcing, AI-readiness, and policymaking,” said Craig Hammer, Manager with the Development Data Group and the Office of the Chief Statistician at the World Bank. “As AI capabilities continue to grow, data reliability, trustworthiness, and discoverability rise to the level of critical priorities for the World Bank Group.”
Challenge Innovation Areas
The competition invites participants to tackle information integrity from multiple angles, focusing on the creation of solutions with real-world applicability in the following areas:
The “Data Dialogue” (Conversational Access): AI-powered tools that allow citizens and journalists to “chat” in natural language with World Bank indicators to get instant, accurate answers.
Instant Visual Stories (Data Integration): Plug-and-play solutions that help newsrooms transform complex economic data into beautiful, interactive graphics that are easy to embed in news stories.
Shielding the Pipeline (Security): Technical “shields” that protect the flow of information from the API to the end-user, preventing data from being intercepted or manipulated.
A “Digital Passport” for Facts (Cross-Platform Verification): Systems that travel with the data whenever it is shared on social media, allowing any user to track and verify the official source with a single click.
Permanent Source Seals (Decentralized Provenance): The use of technologies like blockchain to give data an unalterable record, ensuring that published numbers do not suffer hidden edits.
The Wildcard (Open Innovation): A space for unique and disruptive projects that use official development data to make public information clearer and more reliable.
Impact and Recognition
The winning team will receive a cash prize starting at 5,000 USD to support the continuous development of their project, in addition to securing an exclusive space to present their solution to a global audience of top journalists, investors, and media executives.
This challenge marks the first phase of Media Party’s Information Integrity Tech Initiative, a long-term program designed to discover, incubate, and scale solutions that restore trust in the media ecosystem.
