Jakarta. Hundreds of programmers and hackers from across the globe are in competition this weekend to create software aimed at combating corruption in the final phase off this year's Hackathon.

As many as 720 participants from 270 teams have signed up for the worldwide event, which is being held simultaneously in 12 countries: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Germany, South Korea, Sweden, Britain and the United States.

Indonesia's chapter, called Hackathon Merdeka 3.0, is taking place in Bandung with the support of tech community Code4Nation, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the National Procurement Agency (LKPP) and Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW).

"We hope the participants will be able to come up with [computer] programs that can help Indonesia's fight in eradicating corruption," ICW deputy director Sely Martini said in Jakarta on Saturday.

"Programmers are also welcome to adopt anti-graft systems already in place in other countries and modify them for Indonesia; systems that can, for instance, increase transparency, accountability and public participation [in fighting corruption]."

Indonesia's anti-graft body threw its weight behind the competition as "80 percent of the stings we conduct rely on intelligence [collected by IT experts]," said Sujarnako, KPK director of inter-institutional cooperation.

Presidential Chief of Staff Teten Masduki showed his support at the event's opening ceremony, saying: "We must continuously update our methods in fighting corruption and these programmers are playing an important role in this."