CSI Nihilent Egovernance Awards 2016

CSI Nihilent eGovernance Awards 2016 Sustenance Award for previous (2011) Award winners

Electronic Payment and Application System of Scholarships (ePASS), Andhra Pradesh AP-ePASS is online end to end software application to disburse scholarships to post matric students of Five Departments - Social Welfare, Tribal Welfare, Backward Classes, Economically Backward Classes, Minorities. Even after bifurcation of the State into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, it is still in operation. Further services relating to other schemes in the departments are added. Eg, pre-matric scholarships, enrolment into Best Available Schools, corporate Colleges, registrations and processing of fees for ‘Ambedkar Oversees VidyaNidhi’, ‘Skill upgardation’, ‘Giriputrika Kalyana Yojana’ etc to name a few.

The ePASS has seen change in leadership at administrative as well as political level. But it adapted to the changes by responding positively and timely to the change requirements. Its ease of use, transparency and resourcefulness endeared to all the stakeholders, primarily to the students. Seminars and Video Conferences for capacity building, awareness building and change requirements have kept the application alive over the years. Several new features are added to the existing application to enhance the performance.

Three reasons of significant improvements are  Integration with Treasury for online bills submission, tracking, rejection etc for ease of monitoring  Caste and Income certificates linkage with source data to avoid unnecessary hardship to the students  Aadhaar services like demography and Bio Metric Authentication to avoid duplicates and leakages

Integrated Odisha Treasury Management System (iOTMS) The Integrated Odisha Treasury Management System (iOTMS) is an e-Governance initiative in the realm of Government receipt & payment system. Besides providing a centralized solution for all the 165 Treasuries of the State to conduct their assigned business, the iOTMS has extended a platform for authorization of budgetary provisions among various entities in the State Government.

Finance Department mandated modernizing the finance system through a well planned and phased out strategy. One of the major strategies was to leverage Information and Communication Technology to address the problems. The intention of the State Government to implement the e-governance in Financial Management yielded good result for the State. The efforts of the State Government to achieve “NIL” balance in Treasury Suspense and contain the expenditure of the State as per the Budget provision using Information Technology was not a mean task.

Without effective leadership support at all levels, it is arguably impossible to achieve the desired goal in any project. This was the strategy of the Steering Committee under the leadership of the Additional Chief Secretary Finance Department. The execution of the project was looked in by the Project e-Mission Team under the Director of Treasuries, Odisha which looked into the total operation of the project. Apart from monitoring the implementation of the project in providing infrastructure, maintaining timelines, resolving domain and technical issues and finally ensuring that the objective of the project is realised without compromising the need and comfort of the user.