ABSTRACT:
The complete eradication of corruption may be difficult to achieve, however mechanisms must be in place to curb or reduce it in governance. The paper presents a review on the role of Smart governance as a potent tool in reducing corruption in the public sector. It delineates the role of IT as an anti-corruption tool towards achieving this. It also presents a review on how corruption can be reduced in developing parts of the world like African by using technology to lessen the discretion of the ruling elite and thus bringing about transparency in governance. While it is true that ICT eliminates many opportunities for corruption for those who do not understand the new technology fully, however, it opens up new corruption vistas for those who understand the new systems well enough to manipulate them. Therefore proper safeguards are needed. In this paper, we propose a methodology to combat corruption using information and communication technologies (ICT) that entails process restructuring. While e-Governance holds great promise in many developing countries however, substantial challenges are to be tackled to realise optimum benefits that come with it. Many ICT projects fail because of insufficient planning capacity and political instability. Most developing countries are not fully ready to embrace a comprehensive program of e-government, rather than wait for total readiness, an approach of learning by trial and consolidating small gains are recommended.
Keywords: Smart Governance, e-governance, Corruption, Anti-corruption, ICT, Good governance
