Women & child development ministry-provided facilities to be geotagged

Anganwadis, childcare homes, women shelters and other buildings that come under the women and child development ministry will soon be geotagged. The ministry is in the process of putting geographical location markers on all such infrastructure to map them together, and plan and allocate budgets better.

Officials told DH that once the process is in place, they will be able to automate responsibilities in a manner such that if, for example, an anganwadi worker is absent, then the replacement workers will be able to know, through the process, what is to be done for that day.

The women and child development ministry is working with the information technology ministry to roll out the programme across 30 states—officials of the two ministries held a meeting in August to that effect.

The mapping, to be done through geo-spatial technology, will be part of the Gati Shakti portal, officials said. Gati Shakti was initially launched to digitally integrate government infrastructure across 16 ministries and is now working on geo-mapping infrastructure in the social sector, officials said.

Through geospatial technology, any location can be referenced or tagged through Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), Global Positioning System (GPS) and satellite imagery.

The women and child development ministry officials said that the geospatial database will be in real time. They said it would help the ministry with precise information on the quantity and quality of services at these facilities, as well as understand how far beneficiaries will need to travel to access a certain facility.

“All parameters and facilities, if mapped through geospatial technology, will help us understand the population to facility ratio in a given location, and help us allocate resources better,” an official said. “It will help us understand the gap areas. This technological provision and information will enable support to people.”

Since the nutritional programmes under the Integrated Child Development Scheme have the health as well as the women and child development ministry involved together, some of the rollout of the geospatial mapping will involve schemes of the health ministry as well.