Bhubaneswar, April 30: The civic body will tie up with Odisha Space Application Centre to begin a geographical information system-based survey of properties here.

The move is expected bring transparency to the civic body's holding tax collection system.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation had signed a MoU with the Odisha Space Application Centre (Orsac) in March to implement the project, which is set to be operational within the next two months, said a senior civic official. According to the plan, Orsac will create a database where it will capture, store, analyse, manage and present the spatial data of various kinds of properties in the city for the civic body. It will geo-tag these properties with the names of the property holders following which, civic officials would be able to identify the houses for collection of holding tax.

"The geographical information system (GIS)-based property tax survey is part of urban local bodies' e-municipality project. This will be taken up under the National Mission Mode Project for the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation. The database will help the civic officials to identify defaulters and collect taxes with ease," said an Orsac official.

The BMC has also decided to provide hand-held devices equipped with global positioning system (GPS) to tax collectors for linking daily collection with the central server to minimise corruption and increase efficiency.