Containing corruption by way of denial of opportunities: the role of e-governance

Abstract

Prevention of Corruption is a major challenge to almost all the countries in the world. Governance is a process by which institutions, organizations, companies and societies interact amongst themselves and with the public. In the process of Governance, Government officials enjoy a certain degree of discretion. This, coupled with the Monopoly nature of Government functions, and the anonymity and the opaqueness attended to the procedures adopted by the Government, provide an ambient environment for the abuse of entrusted power by the Government officials in the discharge of their duties. This has led to rampant administrative corruption. The opportunities for corruption can be denied to a great extent if these attendant ambient circumstances and environment can be avoided. Information Technology can informate the underlying processes of administration, i.e., visualize (making transparent) the otherwise opaque organisational processes. This sort of visualization (transparency) itself is an effective Anti-Corruption tool. Though a number of e-Governance programmes have been implemented in India and elsewhere in the world, the anti-corruption benefits of such programmes are only incidental, even if some of them are significant, as prevention of corruption was not considered as one of the primary objectives in designing the e-Governance Programmes. However, the OPEN System (Online Procedures Enhancement for Civil Applications), implemented by Seoul Metropolitan Government, is an exception, where containing corruption was one of the primary objectives of the initiative. Similarly, a number of e-Government initiatives, though, not designed explicitly to contain corruption, have contributed significantly in addressing the issue of corruption, by way of re-engineering of the processes involved, by increasing transparency, by simplifying the procedures, by facilitating citizen participation, etc. In this Paper, a number of such successful initiatives have been studied and the learning points from them have been compiled, which will be of great use in fine-tuning e-Governance to contain corruption.