Facing Corruption in India: ‘We are techies and we can code so we built an Android app’
When I visited Cebit this year, I found Code N, a hall dedicated to young start ups, the most interesting place. Among apps to intelligently plan when to refill your electric car or how to organize car sharing more easy, a stand from India caught my attention. The movement CorruptionTrak presented an android app that makes it easy to report encounters with bribery. A 2005 study conducted by Transparency International in India found that more than 55% of Indians had first-hand experience of paying bribes or influence peddling to get jobs done in public offices successfully. When widespread protests took place in India last summer, many international newspapers wrote about the subject (read more).
Returning home, I couldn’t forget the story of CorruptionTrak and decided to share the idea with you. The group wants to stay anonymous so I will not publish a name or a picture of them.
You call yourself a movement against corruption. How did you come together as a team and why did you start to take action?
There was a lot of agitation in India last year in August when people in support of an anti-corruption bill in the parliament, came out on the streets in millions protesting against corruption. We were sitting in our dorm kitchen talking about it and we really wanted to do something about it. Since we are techies and we can code so we built an Android app. In fact we were so excited about the idea that we built the first prototype of the Android app overnight. We then finally released the Android app in November and our web app in January this year.
There are some other websites like corruptiontracker.org and ipaidabribe.com that use of swarm intelligence to collect reports of everyday corruption. What distinguishes you from them?
Our unique goal is to collect rich data, described by detailed metadata (such as geolocation of the offence), to make the process of utilizing this data more multi-faceted. We want reports through CorruptionTrak to not only enable statistics and stories but also encourage innovative methods of tackling including data analysis and real-time action. Moreover, we are employing multiple platforms to gather data, including mobile smartphones and SMSs.
We aim to complement existing efforts; there is no “competition” in this space.
How do you garantuee anonymity to your users and prevent discrediting false reports at the same time?
We take anonymity very seriously. When someone submits a report his or her identity is never revealed. The reporter has the option of providing us with the email address so that we can reach out and ask for more details. We intend to use manual verification at first, assisted by algorithms later to filter out false reports; we already have data specialists on the team. False reports can be detected by examining content and patterns.
What happens with the reports once they are published on your website? Do you collaborate with state institutions to turn them into law suits?
We collect these report to enable public authorities to pinpoint geographical areas of significant corruption and identify the nature of corruption in each of these areas. While the reports themselves don’t serve as legally binding proof, they are very useful in initiating specific investigative action against these acts while also serving as a social deterrent against petty corruption. We are also interested in some of the more novel ways of using such data, including sting operations by media bodies that monitor these reports.
Over time, with the increase in number of reports submitted to our website/app, our data scientists will implement algorithms to extract insights; for instance, we can correlate the frequency of reports, time of day associated with reports and other patterns associated with specific geolocations to pinpoint traffic police officers guilty of corruption.
We are still in talks with few of the NGOs in India for collaboration and take this movement forward.
How are your actions financed?
We have been able to get our platform up and running by dedicating our own time and offsetting the minimal server costs through our own investment.
Where do you see CorruptionTrak in five years?
Our next goal is visibility. We’ve spent time setting up the technology, but we need people to begin using the service.
We intend to achieve this both by partnering like-minded organizations, media bodies and public authorities, as well as through organic means such as targeted online ads. We want to make this app, our website and eventually, our SMS service, a part of the day to day life of the common man and we need money to make our message heard.
