I Paid a Bribe by Janaagraha, a Bangalore based not-for-profit, harnesses the collective energy of citizens and asks them to report on the nature, number, pattern, types, location, frequency and values of corruption activities. These reports would be used to argue for improving governance systems and procedures, tightening law enforcement and regulation and thereby reduce the scope for corruption.

Here’s a presentation of data from the application:

Transparency International could make something like this much more widely available around the world.

While awareness is good, follow-up is even better. For example, it’s known that New York’s subway signal inspections were being falsified. Signal inspections are pretty serious stuff, as failures lead to disasters, such as the one in Washington. Nothing much happened after: the person responsible (making $163k a year) was merely reassigned.