March, 2014 Volume III, Issue 1 The President of India lauds ICT initiatives of Civil Accounts Organization o f f i c e r s o f C iv i l A c c o u n t s Organization. Addressing the probationers, the President said that the Indian Civil Accounts Service was carved out of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service in 1976 as part of reforms in 4 I n d i a ' s P u b l i c F i n a n c i a l e-Scholarship through PFMS Management System. The idea was 6 to separate statutory audit and Government approves PFMS accounts at the federal level. The President stated that he was happy 7 Auditing can be interesting to note that the system has worked w e l l . T h e C i v i l A c c o u n t s 8 Experiencing India while Learning PFM Organization has, over the years, progressed in the right direction 10 and has developed systems not only Shaking hands through capacity building to keep pace with developments in 11 Information and Communication Learning at Grassroots Technology but also to fulfill the aspirations of the common people. 12 PAO, Bhopal Gas Victims The President said that Indian Civil Shri Jawahar Thakur, Controller General of Accounts Accounts Service has very rightly 13 presenting the memento to the Hon'ble President of A day to cherish India Shri Pranab Mukherjee chosen its motto 'Koshpoorvah Samarambhah' from Kautilya's robationers of Indian Civil 'Arthashastra'. A strong and well- managed treasury function is the Enchanted in Andmans!!! Accounts Service (ICAS) Pcalled on the President of base for all kind of planning in Post Card India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at governance and development; and Rashtrapati Bhavan on 14th March a l s o t h e o u tc o m e o f g o o d 2 0 1 4 . P r o b a t i o n e r s w e r e governance. Today there is a rising accompanied by Shri Jawahar expectation among the public for 14 Thakur, Controller General of greater efficiency in delivery Accounts and some other senior systems. To address these concerns Cont.....Page-2 4 6 8 10 11 13 Cont.....from Page-1 it is imperative for government departments to said that he had an opportunity to inaugurate modernize their systems and make them the 'Government e-Payment Gateway' (GEPG), citizen-centric. He said that he was happy that developed by the Civil Accounts Organization the reforms introduced by the organization on October 31, 2011 in his capacity as the were in the correct direction. Finance Minister. The idea behind developing The President stated that use of modern ICT an e-payment system was to eliminate tools is the key for all government agencies to beneficiary-dependence on government offices achieve higher efficiency and make optimum and officials; and instead directly credit funds use of available human resources. The Civil into their accounts. With e-payment initiative Accounts Organization was one of the first the Payment Life Cycle has shrunk, thereby organizations in India to have started using improving systemic efficiency. computers in government business initially. He Volume III, Issue 1 ear 2014 started with great news to cherish. The Government of India Yapproved the National Roll-out of CPSMS as a Central Sector Scheme and renamed it as countries organized many international the Public Financial Management System programmes in this financial year. We have one (PFMS). This is a big responsibility for Civil report on ITEC-SCAAP programme that recently Accounts Organization. Apart from a report on concluded. This has been contributed by one of this, we are carrying another interesting story the participants from Kyrgyzstan. INGAF is on e-scholarship. This explains how PFMS is training 100 Afghan officials in four batches on helping government at every level in Internal Audit and PFM in 2013-14. We have a implementing the plan schemes. report on the ttraining of third batch of Afghan Recently ICAS probationers got an opportunity officials. to call on the President of India Shri Pranab ICAS probationers of 2012 batch, as part of their Mukherjee. Apart from the cover story on this, Bharat Darshan, went to Andaman Nicobar one of the probationers M. Renuka has shared Islands. Revathy D. has done a report for our her experience of visiting Rashtrapati Bhawan. popular Post Card page. Dr. N. Shravan Kumar Long awaited fifth Assembly of Association of has filed an interesting story on his village Government Accounts Organizations of Asia attachment in Haryana. (AGAOA) was held in Thimpu. Member We have a new contributor for our newsletter in countries agreed to have more activities under this issue. Sreedevi V Nair has shared her the banner of AGAOA. India has to play a major experience of training on Internal Audit, she role in the capacity building for the officials of underwent recently. We look forward to have member countries. We have a detailed report on new contributors in every issue of Civil this at the back cover. Accounts Newsletter. Civil Accounts Organization in its relentless pursuit to share knowledge with other Vivekanand – Asstt. Controller General of Accounts Dr. N. Shravan Kumar – Deputy Director, INGAF Revathy D. – ICAS Probationer M. Renuka – ICAS Probationer Jagmohan Parsoya – Faculty Member, INGAF Sreedevi V. Nair – AAO, Deptt. of Supply, Mumbai Eliza Bortoeva – ITEC Participant from Kyrgyzstan March, 2014 e-Scholarship through PFMS “If this integration was done a couple of years scholarships through cheques and cash back, I would not be a victim of bureaucratic certainly appears like a medieval period hassles in payment of my scholarship amount. I maritime ship having no time line once the have so far received scholarship for years 2009- direction is lost. Tracing out its reason for delay 10 and 2010-11 only. For another two years is practically terrible for a student. 2011-12 and 2012-13, I am still in queue even Information and Communication Technology after completing all the formalities. The balance (ICT) is believed to be a powerful tool and amount is Rs. one lakh sixty thousand. Only after catalyst for accelerating economic development getting it, my father would be able to pay back the of a society. It has considerable potential for loan amount.” delivering public services. Ahshan Ahmad, Student of NIFT, Delhi is not the Under e-initiative, various MIS systems of only victim but there is plethora of such concerned Ministries, Departments and other episodes in the non-transparent age old system Government Agencies maintain online database of disbursement of funds to beneficiaries under of students which is available in public domain. various schemes of Scholarships. Anyone can view the beneficiary list online on The age old system of disbursement of respective Web portals. However these MIS Volume III, Issue 1 Systems have no mechanism to identify the For Central Government Scholarships, ghost beneficiaries as the identification of e_Sanction and e_Bill would be generated by students for scholarship remains with the Program Division and payment will be made by institutes. Further, there is no mechanism to PAO of the Ministry through Government identify whether the same beneficiary is paid or e_Payment Gateway (GePG). For scholarships, the point of time when one is paid. the previous process of disbursement involved I n t e g r a t i o n o f t h e m o n e y Online Scholarship t r a v e l l i n g M a n a g e m e n t through up to S y s t e m s w i t h s i x Public Financial administrative M a n a g e m e n t layers. Now, it System (PFMS) w o u l d b e w o u l d b e a reduced to a m i l e s t o n e i n t w o - s t e p e s t a b l i s h i n g a p r o c e s s b y s y s t e m f o r process of re- transparency and e n g i n e e r i n g accountability in t h e r e b y m a n a g i n g t h e shrinking the scholarships paid p e r i o d o f to thousands of disbursement students all across cycle. It is also a India from the step towards metros to the most green and clean remote villages. environment as PFMS will provide i t w i l l online real-time MIS for bank accounts credited discontinue the need of issuing millions of against the students list. This will provide the cheques every year. audit trail to the Administrative Ministries as Added to this, PFMS provides online payment well as the State Agencies and other MIS Users status to the beneficiaries by merely entering of different hierarchy on one click. Verification the Aadhar number or bank account number on of details for grievances could be done online. the link 'Know your payments' on home page of There would be no need to verify passbooks and PFMS web portal. seize the registers. One can verify whether the same amount is been credited to the beneficiary - Vivekanand account one was eligible for and also the timeliness of payment as per Guidelines. Further, the system eliminates the manual intervention once the beneficiary list is final. March, 2014 Government approves National Roll-out of Public Financial Management System (PFMS) ased on the successful implementation of approved by the Ministry of Finance will also be the Central Plan Scheme Monitoring created soon.