Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW
Vol. 5 Num 1035 Mon. April 30, 2007  
   
Letters to Editor


E-governance


I would like to appreciate the government's crash programme against corruption. Along with other approaches E-governance should help a lot to establish a sustainable, transparent and accountable system.

E-governance is the public sector's use of information and communication technologies with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizens' participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent and effective.

First of all, we have to develop a nation wide database. National identity card and identification number will become the anchor point of the database.

All bank accounts should be computerized and incorporated in a system so that a monitoring system can be developed which will create an opportunity to supervise banking transactions. In addition, when the clients come to deposit huge amounts of money, the bank should also ask for proper documents to verify the sources.

The taxation department should have access to the bank information system to verify their clients' incomeexpenditure statements. If someone becomes a loan defaulter it should be recorded in that system. It will help other banks to take precaution to prevent bad loans.

A nationwide database should also be developed on criminal records and it should be available to the agencies concerned such as banks, insurance companies, PSC, and the ACC.

Although corruption is ubiquitous in the world, its magnitude is not the same everywhere. The role of e-governance is tremendous in the developed world in establishing transparency and accountability.

Hope the government will introduce this modern technology.