Geoinformatics Technologies for Fighting Corruption

When the decision making depends on the indviduals wishes, the horror of corruption emerges. In most of the public utility cases using right technology might reduce the content of corruption. The reform initiatives for the e-governance has recently slowed down in order to acheive transperancy in functioning of the government offices. The access to the information recently made online through e-tendering, online greveinces, tracking of complains status, etc becomes outreach program to fight against corruption at the system level.

Most the government contracts and payment when assigned digital tags, the citizens would get the desired knowledge about their area of interest. The use of Geoinformatics (GIS and Remote Sensing) and tracking devices most of the monitoring tasks of the government program and services can be achieved. Two departments are example for the reduction in corruption intensity these are Indian Railway and Telecommunication for the common men. Most of the e-tendering process by the governments have become easier and little hassle. But the decision making still remains with the department heads and executives in the government, these are not assisted by Information technologies. The Geoinformatics so far have penetrated in some ministries and department which is helpful in monitoring the works and progress in the sectors.

The people in general is not conversant with the e-governance initiatives by the department which might have been helpful in reducing the corruption. The technology penetration is possible in all the governed departments which helps in monitoring and assigning the tasks for the development and status of works. But governments are slow in implementing the technologies citing ignorance and pitfalls ahead. Using internet has been limited to just having a site, some departments have opted to inform general public about their works and achievement. Most of the public services do not interface with citizen citing confidentiality. The legal tools under discussion might help in punishing the culprits, why not use the technologies to monitor and analyse the decision making of the key departments? T

he application areas of Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing has raised the technological possibilities for integrating the services departments to allow users to get access to functions performed by the local and state governments. Next generation reform should allow the citizens to access the service information on their mobile, PCs and Laptop using the mentioned technologies.