Orissa AG's office to get treasury link

In a step forward to achieve full computerisation in the state government's financial transactions, the directorate of treasury and inspection is on the verge of connecting Orissa Accountant General's office with the treasury network of the state.

This follows recent networking of the state finance department with treasuries located at various parts of the state.

"V-SAT is being set up at the AG's office and we will be able to provide connectivity to it within the next couple of days", said a senior official of the directorate.

"Once the connectivity is established, we can send all treasury related data to AG's office electronically", he added.

Meanwhile, the computerisation of all treasuries in Orissa except one has been completed under the 'Orissa Treasury management System' (OTMS) project. While 161 treasuries, sub treasuries or special treasuries were targeted to be computerised, due to non availability of space at Bapujinagar in Bhubaneswar, the special treasury could not be computerised.

"It has now been shifted to the main building of the directorate and hopefully start functioning from June1" the official pointed out. Significantly, this DFID assisted project has been completed without any time and cost over run due to the cooperation of the field and treasury staff. The project, which aims at strengthening the treasuries in the state with the help of the state-of-the-art technology, has been completed before the scheduled time.

Though originally, the project was targeted to be completed by March 2007, it has been completed one month before.

According to sources, during the first phase of the project initiated in June 2005, works like system customisation, preparation of bills of materials for the project and piloting of the system were undertaken.

The second phase, which was called implementation phase, formally started with roll out of the service in the Deogarh district treasury in October 2006.

During this phase the directorate was given the task of computerisation of all treasuries and establish connectivity between the directorate and the state finance department. While the sub-treasuries have been connected to the district treasuries through a network of 125 VSATS installed in each sub-treasury, the district or special treasuries are connected to the central location through leased lines with back up connectivity through VSAT.

The entire application is developed in ORACLE 10g platform. The system captures the real time transactional data from each of the treasuries, stamps transactions & pension payments.

Moreover, it controls the expenditure vis-à-vis the budget provisions up to the level of individual DDO's. Moreover, it ensures that the expenditure under no circumstance can exceed the budget provisions.

"The most important feature of the project is the budget interface system which brings an end to the concept of excess expenditure", he pointed out. Significantly, the computerisation process is going to benefit 2 lakh pensioners of the state in a great way. It is expected to improve the primary service delivery mechanism of treasuries namely pension disbursement.

As it provides the facility for direct crediting of the pension amount to the bank account of the pensioner, they will no more be required to stand in long queues for receiving pensions.

Currently, the directorate is developing the data base for the pensioners in the state and they are being requested to open bank account.

Once the banks permit the pensioners to open account with nil balance, bankwise payment advice will be generated and sent to the banks. This will enable the pensioners to draw their pension from any branch of the bank having the core banking facility (CBS). It may be noted that currently, 10 public sector banks have been authorised to provide pension.

Similarly, a sub module has been developed for preparation of the salary pay roll for the government employees.

Once the collection of data from DDO's who number about 6000 is collected and validation of data is over, it will be possible to cross check the salary bill, he said.