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Bihar dials mobile tech to track road-building

         Upwardly mobile Bihar is now set to become the first state in India to use the latest cell phones for centralised monitoring of road construction. In an earlier post we saw how the Bihar police were using the GIS technology to track down the criminals.

         Bihar State Road Development Corporation (BSRDC), under the Road Construction Department (RCD), will deploy Android phones to help executive engineers keep an eye on road construction from district headquarters, while the RCD Secretary will do so from the Patna office.

         Earlier, Bihar State Bridge Construction Corporation had successfully used GPS-enabled phones to help mobile inspectors track engineers on duty. The latest mobile operation system supports all Google applications in 3G mobile phones.

         Using the latest Android technology, assistant or executive engineers will visit construction sites every two days to take pictures of constructed roads and upload them on the RCD website. Photos taken using these phones would verify that the pictures have actually been taken at the site of the construction. To ensure double compliance of work done, the RCD Secretary will monitor the same using Google Maps, available on the phone.

           Once the government is convinced of the usefulness of the technology, all 200 engineers in-charge of road projects under the RCD would be given the phones, said RCD Secretary and BSRDC Managing Director Pratyay Amrit.

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