Or look up organizations that do that regularly, cross check their output against another independent organization (most of these do "random" sampling, some focus on specific issues like national security, others on earmarks specifically, or still others that work to smooth out anyone's FOIA request, then host the documents that come out for open research). There are also researchers and orgs offering varying measures of corruption, internationally, or specifically specifically focussed on federal government over time, or national security spending, or aid spending, or state government corruption, etc.

There's no one measure or one org I'd say anyone should rely on. The moment you do, every organization and official will start adjusting strategy to optimize for the best score there.

But generally speaking, the US has much better high quality research that tracks corruption, and sufficient resources for independent investigators to exploit (despite the usual beaurocraric and legal nonsense), that you can get a reasonable picture of where things stand across the US, and between governments.

Of course, what counts as corruption matters. To go back to the example you gave, the more likely mechanism will be for guy number 3 to claim better "quality", and "prove" this based on the recommendations of multiple officials, who themselves would have been convinced of this based on presentations given to them by contractor no. 3's team. And during this innocent networking, oh so casually, conversation will steer towards future career goals, the need for people with government experience in lobbying firms, or the contractors own firms lobbying arm, and would that be something you consider?

After all, we both believe in the need for high "quality" in the products used to help our boys in the front lines, or the "safety" of AI, and after all, we the producers of said technology are best suited to tell you how to regulate it, with our pure souls and complete lack of self interest.

None of this is corruption, by legal standards. But the end effect is the same as the "joke" example you provided. Contractor number 3 is just clever than the typical cartoon villain.