Here are my two cents on why we started CorruptionTrak.

Corruption seems like an insurmountable problem because it is sociological in nature; it’s difficult for the common man to envision social change because it doesn't happen instantaneously. But here’s how social change can and has been engendered:

1) Fear of Censure - Corruption flourishes, at least in India, because people aren't worried about being caught. You can, as one user of our service put it "show [your] dirty pan-chewed teeth and shamelessly put [your] hand forth for bakhsheesh" (baksheesh = bribe) and not have a worry in the world because your act has no chance of being traced. I speak here, of course, of petty or day-to-day corruption.

Note that I don’t imply “fear” in “big brother” terms. I speak of the fear required to maintain law and order. This works in the same way that the fear of a policeman pulling you over or a radar camera catching you in the act makes you keep to road rules at all times. Here’s where we think technology has a vital role to play.

It’s difficult to have an honest policeman stationed at every street corner for obvious reasons, hence, through increasingly ubiquitous technology, we are hoping to tap into the honesty of the common man. By giving everybody the ability to make such transactions traceable, we are hoping to instill this element of fear of being traced. If the idea of citizen policing takes off, then we hope the fear of watchful eyes will make people think twice before demanding a bribe, if at all.

Of course, gathering this data is only one albeit essential step. Fear will truly come into play if people are actually caught. To facilitate this, we have several plans, including those that involve the media (sting operations etc) and the law (political allegiances aside, we eagerly await some of the provisions of the Jan Lokpal proposals, some of which institute official bodies that we hope to channel such data to).

2) Shame – Corruption, although often blatant, is still frowned upon by most sections of society. Nobody wants to be identified as being “corrupt”. The possibility of being shamed can be a massive deterrent. While this idea of an entire society being consumed by fear of a website seems a bit presumptuous at first, we think that this can be done by targeting constituent fragments of society. If you belong to a specific community, say a group of salesmen, which abides by this service religiously, you might not pay a bribe to the peon to get ahead in line at the next customer office you visit for fear of being shamed in front of your peer group. After all, the members of your group could at any time access this service and learn of your corrupt ways; even if the occurrence of such practices was previously left unsaid, the uneasy calm is likely to be shaken through validation from an external source such as this.

We have spent several months pondering the right ecosystem to realize the above goals. For instance, the above method of “being shamed by your peer group” could just as easily be used by a jealous member to slander someone else. Hence, we’re looking to leave specific names out of our system and rather, target this evil by location and by nature of crime, to shift the burden of self-governance (due to collective shame) to small fragments of society.

We are looking to strike the right balance of the various factors in play, hence this initial post on HN – our prior experiences have shown this to be the ideal ground for gaining good feedback and suggestions. If you have your own vision on how this idea should be molded, feel free to post here or contact us at admin@corruptiontrak.com , no matter what your country of origin or professional background.