[microarchitect]

How do you expect this site to be used? Is this an attempt to list all the places where one has to bribe to get stuff done? Sadly, everybody knows the answer to that, it's everywhere. Is it an attempt show corruption is all-pervasive in India? The answer to that is also obvious.

My question is this: let's say everyone with access to the internet used your site and reported all the bribes they paid, how will this help change the situation?

[peudoscienceped]

Efforts like this and ipaidabribe.com shed light on societal processes that are poorly understood and undocumented.

I see it helping in few ways. First, it provides a quantitative look at it, so you know what your corruption tax is going to be. Second, there are regional variations, so in the medium-term, people can respond to this information to make better choices (yes, it is everywhere, but how bad is it?). Third, in the long-term, this can potentially impact governance. Public perception can be powerful, so I could see progressive entities trying to get off these websites.

[satyamag]

Also, with legislation like the Citizen's Right to Grievance Redress Bill we are hoping that practices will soon be in place that provide a channel to the anti corruption agencies for complaints. At that point the data available via CorruptionTrak could help greatly in investigations.

In addition, we believe there are people in the administration who want to change things. To cite a success story for http://ipaidabribe.com/, a similar website

"Several government officials at different levels, some of them horrified at finding their department high up on the list of bribe-takers, have contacted Janaagraha and asked for its help in building better structures. One was a commissioner of a transport department, who realized that he could reduce corruption by minimizing the number of touchpoints between citizens and officials."

(taken from http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/indian-website-uncover...)

That said, this is an experiment. It will take some time before we can gauge the success of our initiative.

[ishanagr]

Our alert system can help journalists and administration to keep up with the cases around there areas. People might use it avoid offices with higher corruption cases. All the data will is available so anyone can do their own analytics. You may also dropin your email id while reporting and if authorities want they could contact you for evidence.

[aufreak3]

I wonder whether the anti-thesis of such sites might be more effective than these "complain away" ones. By that, I mean sites where people can post appreciative notes about job well done by particular government staff. If the ratings there then translate into something tangible for the staff, then they may be incentivized to do well.

[govind201]

Interesting. An informal channel for customer feedback, you mean? A review site without the emphasis on the negativity of the acts? Hmm.