Defence forces' salary records to be digitised

The pay and accounts of all the defence forces, including Army, Navy, Air Force, Border Security Force and the Defence Research and Development Organisation will soon be digitised and integrated on to a single platform.

The project, initiated by the Comptroller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA), has been awarded to Infinite Computer Solutions Ltd which will begin pilot testing next month.

The company hopes to complete the project by December this year. Initi-ally, the pilot will be implemented at more than 30 locations and information will be shared at 920 locations in the country.

"With the automation, the CGDA will not just be able to track pay and accounts of all the defence forces but will also be able to monitor the capital and revenue expenditure of the defence ministry. Each contract awarded by any defence force will be captured online," Upinder Zutshi, CEO Infinite Computer Solutions Ltd said.

"We demonstrated the prototype of the system design and specification document to the defence officials and got it approved," Zutshi said.

He said that the defence forces had computerised the data available only for the last 50 years.

"Through the project, attempts are being made to digitise even the data in manual format," he said.

"The automation will reduce the manual labour and will be cost effective. Automation of the whole data will also help the defence personnel to get details of their financial transactions at the click of a button," official sources said, adding, "The automation will be done at a cost of Rs 8-10 crore."