Ruralscope: An information system for tracking rural disbursements

Tracking and ensuring disbursements make it to their intended recipients is among the problems development professionals are most concerned about. To examine the potential monitoring role playable by technology, we present RuralScope, an information repository designed to handle the information needs of a newly started welfare scheme offering daily wage payments to over 31 million families in rural India. Since the problem of monitoring development extends beyond project specific needs to a general sense of awareness, RuralScope works on two levels. First, for project auditors, RuralScope acts as an easily searchable, disconnected database of disbursements that helps speed up the audit process. Second, for a more general audience, an organized and annotatable front end for casual viewers, policy-makers, and researchers alike to keep track of documents and data related to the project RuralScope.