Geo-Tagging: An Innovative Tool To Enhance Transparency and Supervision of Development Projects

Transparency through Geo-Tagging Noel Sta. Ines, Senior Procurement Specialist, EASR1

• Proven in 2009 as a powerful tool to boosting transparency, improving supervision, and fighting fraud and corruption in all stages of project implementation.

• Can apply to almost all type of subprojects under Bank-financing • Expanded and scaled up, and in various stages of applications in at least 10

World Bank financed projects in the Philippines.• Has become one as one of the important tools of the Philippine CMU for

monitoring and portfolio mapping, and is now plan to be used for all new Bank projects in the country

• Has attracted the attention of Philippine President Benigno Aquino, and is now being mainstreamed in many government agencies

• An innovative approach for citizen and CSO engagement • Will help answer: Is the right activity implemented in the right place?

• Geotagged data taken at the time the subprojects are proposed for financing are use by the agencies in the pre-review and site identification.

• Geotagged data for approved SPs are uploaded in the respective agency websites, e.g www.damrdp.net, www.daprdp.net, ngp.denr.gov.ph, and which can be validated thru virtual visit by oversight agencies, CSO, Bank, and bidders.

• Progress photos are uploaded during implementation, and are use to support claims for payments.

The Use and Implementation of Geo-Tagging

• A revolutionary and inexpensive approach of using ICT + GPS applications

• Device required is only a GPS enabled android cellphone, and access to freely available apps Telco signal and internet

• Easily replicable for mainstreaming to Government institution

Geo-tagging Example No. 1: Visualization of a farm-to-market road in a conflict area: showing specific location, ground distance, track / alignment, elevation profile, ground photos (with coordinates, date and time taken) of Farm-to-market Road, i.e. baseline information + Progress photos + 3D visualization

Geo-tagging Example No. 2: Visualization of reforestation projects. Polygon / area (i.e. number of seedlings planted and cost may be computed virtually, and ground photos of reforestation subproject

Geo-tagging Example No. 3: mapping of distribution of micro SPs to beneficiaries

Geo-tagging Example No. 4: Mapping and visualization of an irrigation system; showing the main canal and the sublaterals, current service area, service area to be generated as a result of irrigation improvement + geotagged photos of the inventory of condition of the structures and the canals + progress photo graphs

Geo-tagging Example No. 5: An accurate bird’s eye view of mapping of combination of various interventions from different sources of funds (school buildings, farm to market road, reforestation , and water supply) in a municipality

Thank You for Your Attention