Bribecaster: Documenting bribes through community participation

Abstract

Corruption is endemic in many emerging economies - many transactions of private citizens with government institutions require payment of bribes. While well known as a general phenomenon, specific data about the "bribe economy" are hard to come by. But such data are needed for rational responses to corruption at the societal and individual level - to expose it; to know which offices to avoid; or to know how much to pay if other recourse is not available. In response to a corruption survey of 102 Indian participants we are developing Bribecaster, a mobile application that enables citizen collection and curation of corruption data. A key research question is how to create a system that has accurate data while simultaneously protecting users from repercussions of having their identities revealed.