You might be surprised to learn that a staggering $1 trillion is lost to bribery and corruption each year.  Nowhere is this a bigger issue than in India, so it’s perhaps no surprise that a new crowdsourcing venture has been launched in the country to try and stamp out the practice.

The project, called I Paid A Bribe, asks citizens to share instances where they have been forced to bribe officials to achieve outcomes that should not require such ‘greasing of the wheels’.

The site allows you to report your experience in full detail, including where it happened, the service you were seeking, how much you paid, and the person who bribed you.

In a nice touch, the site also allows users to highlight those regarded as clean and honest, so that readers know who best to go to.  It’s a nice idea that is seeing similar ventures launched in other countries, including the African website Not In My Country.

Using the web to keep officials honest

Of course, to fully utilize such websites requires decent Internet access, and a recent study highlights the critical role this plays in the trustworthiness of government.

The study found that governments tend to be more honest and transparent when citizens have good access to the Internet.

“Transparency is important because it improves overall trust in the government and validates that governance to its citizens,” the authors say. “The difference between the truth and a lie is evidence. If governments can provide proper evidence to citizens that they are governing well, it can improve the possibility of positive interactions between governments and the people.”

The authors identified a number of factors that they believe contribute to the transparency of government, including the demographics of the population and its education levels.

“We identified many factors contributing to an increase or decrease in government transparency, including internet access, education level, poverty level, minority populations, and population density,” they say.

The authors examined transparency data collated by the NGO Sunshine Review, and compared that with demographic data from over 1,000 counties in 12 Midwestern states.

The websites of each county government were analyzed to gauge how much information they provided and how accessible this information was to the average user.

It emerged that counties with relatively low education levels also appeared to have low web accessibility levels.  The authors contend, therefore, that increasing internet accessibility would not have as large an impact in these areas as in areas of low accessibility but higher education levels.

“For governments to improve transparency in their counties, it really requires a holistic approach that directly addresses the needs of specific areas,” they suggest. “If a highly educated population in an urban area has low internet access, then improving that access may improve citizens’ abilities to seek government information online. However, in a rural, less educated population, governments may want to seek transparency in other ways than online, or search to improve factors like education and income first.”