Serenata de Amor is an open civic technology project that uses artificial intelligence and data science for social control of public administration in Brazil. Created by Open Knowledge Brasil and a large volunteer community, it has earned more than 4,600 stars on GitHub.
The project, known in Portuguese as Operação Serenata de Amor, applies machine learning and open data analysis to public spending, helping citizens and journalists spot suspicious use of public money by elected officials. It brings together data pipelines, analysis tools and public-facing outputs under one open umbrella, and its website explains the work for non-technical visitors as well as contributors. The repository notes that it does not receive frequent updates, with the last code activity in early 2024, but it remains an influential reference for civic data science: a real deployment of AI techniques for government transparency rather than a commercial product. Its founders and long-term contributors come from Brazil’s open knowledge and open source communities.
Its experience has inspired similar transparency initiatives beyond Brazil, and the project remains a touchstone example of how open data, machine learning and volunteer engineering can be combined in the public interest, with methods that other civic groups can study and adapt.
Serenata de Amor is a free, non-profit open project released under the MIT license. Its code, data work and public outputs are available to everyone at no cost, supported by community contributions and donations.
Serenata de Amor is for civic technologists, data journalists, researchers and transparency advocates who want a proven example of AI used for public accountability. Developers interested in data science for social good can study its pipelines and approach, or adapt its ideas to open government data in their own countries.