PUTRAJAYA, March 27 — To promote fair price accountability and data transparency, the Economy Ministry today announced a community-driven platform application to provide consumers the convenience of price checking on their smartphones.

Its minister Rafizi Ramli said the application named "KitaJaga” allows consumers to check on the prices of groceries based on wherever they are located.

He said the initiative was part of his ministry’s effort to empower consumers’ decision-making based on open source data that is readily and easily accessible such as OpenDOSM.

"This initiative is a collaborative effort between the ministry and KitaJaga who developed the application itself and its features.

"KitaJaga has benefited from open source data through OpenDOSM which was launched last month.

"The ministry will start with groceries since most price hikes are focused in this category and will eventually expand this to other categories for consumers,” he told a press conference here.

OpenDOSM is a platform that catalogues, visualises, and analyses the Department of Statistics Malaysia’s wealth of data.

All data sets found on OpenDOSM are freely available for download either as raw datasets, tables or charts. They can also be scrapped using the Python programming language.

Rafizi said the initiative shows that not all state-driven application development required funding or time-consuming.

He said KitaJaga developed the app voluntarily.

He also said the ministry planned to work together with other e-commerce stakeholders to expand existing price-checking potential in order for consumers to familiarise themselves with price comparison based on complete data.

"This does not mean the rakyat must purchase cheap goods but such application would serve as a benchmark in the course of their purchase while encouraging a data-driven mindset among society,” he said.