Pay on Time

The common pay bill preparation system (PayManager) owes its origin to a
government order that stipulated that data depository system be implemented in
government treasuries for collation of employees personal data, pay bill
details, and thereafter submission of electronic data to deduction collection
agencieslike GPF and SI departments.

The primary objective of PayManager was to make available pay bill data in
soft copy to treasuries, GPF, and SI departments as well as provide a common
platform to drawing and disbursing officers (DDOs) for pay bill preparation. The
G2G/G2E initiative was developed by the NIC, and the Directorate of Treasuries &
Accounts (DTA) was the nodal agency for project execution.

Covering 3.35 lakh employees, and used by over 9,500 DDOs, PayManager enables
preparation of various types of bills; and also enables DDOs/employees for
fixation of pay, and calculation of arrears recommended by the Sixth Pay
Commission. Whats more, soft copy generation for banks and treasuries can also
be done.

A website is also hosted for secretariat employees, covering around 2,500
employees in a single office. Since under the project, at least one system with
a printer (in the DDOs) was a pre-requisite, and considering that many DDOs did
not fulfill the requirement, the project was executed with the assistance of
Computer Service Provider (CSP).

Roadblocks

Considering that the DDO offices were not acquainted with IT, the
implementation was a herculean task requiring software training and since most
users were geographically dispersed, training posed a big challenge.

The identification and allotment of unique codes to allowances and deductions
took some time. Also since a majority of the DDOs were not acquainted with
PayManager, therefore, guidelines had to be developed for them to get
computerized bill prepared with the help of computer service providers (CSP).
Another major challenge was to develop uniform software for the various
departments.

Paybacks

The treasuries now accept only computerized salary bills along with the soft
copy of the data and further validate the soft copy of the data with the
available master data of the employees, thereby avoiding any possibility of
drawing salary multiple times by any DDOs/employees.

Treasuries now also generate schedules for the deduction department like GPF
and SI for sending data in soft copy. The soft copy of the pay bill data has
enabled treasuries to make payments using ECS. The electronic salary bill data
assists the GPF and SI departments to post details of employees directly to the
ledger without mistake.

Beneficial not just for the treasuries, PayManager is also helping employees
to cross-check their GPF number with the master data and ensure that the
deduction has been posted in the right account since the soft copy of data is
sent directly to treasuries. Employees can also calculate their income tax
liability and access annual reports like Form 16, GA55. The PayManager system
also facilitates banks for credit of salary information into employees accounts
through ECS.

Under PayManager, technology was kept simple so as to maximize the usage of
internal resources and manpower, so that acceptance was high and risk due to
change is minimal. In addition, the processing time has reduced since only
minimum changes are required to process and print the salary bills with pay
slips being available over the net.

Stuti Das

stutid@cybermedia.co.in