Treasuries In-Control

Bringing about revenue efficiency and controlling government's overall
spend in a chaotic state like Uttar Pradesh, by introducing new e-enabled
applications, is precisely what the Integrated Treasury System Applications (ITSANIC)
had sought to do. But the project faced its own set of challenges. Launched in
1994-95, it has indeed come a long way in its efforts to establish an order.

The application has computerized transactions of a huge volume of treasury
papers, in the most populated state of India. The ITSANIC provided both G2G and
G2C interfaces.  

ITSANIC was initially implemented in 90 treasuries of the undivided UP. After
the creation of the State of Uttranchal, it is now reduced to 73 treasuries,
which are unevenly distributed geographically and have heterogeneous work
environment. Twenty terminals have been provided to each district.

The project primarily focuses on bringing transparency in government
transactions, accurate and speedy accounting, proper budgeting, and timely
reporting, thereby making treasuries a 'paperless or less paper office'.

In over a decade's time the ITSANIC went past many milestones. “Earlier
the time gap in financial reporting extended up to 2-3 months, but now we get it
latest by fourth of every month,” says SB Singh, senior technical director and
state informatics officer, NIC's UP State Unit. “To a great extent,
financial discipline in the state has been created,” adding that the State is,
however, focusing more on G2C at present.

The average recorded challans per month per treassury is about 20,000
entries.

“We have submitted a proposal to the state government for enhancing the
spending on beautifying the civil amenities at each treasury. We have got
assurance that the proposal will be looked into,” Singh adds.

An amount to the tune of Rs 20 lakh is likely to be spent on each treasury.
Besides upgrading software and servers, we think it is very important to
beautify the treasury, he says. “We are targeting the mindset of the people
with an idea, as we believe it changes the peoples' perception,” he adds.

In-built Features

ITSANIC has completely automated treasury operations. It has inbuilt
features that enable it to print online cheques, do online budget checking,Â
and generate all types of MIS reports required by state government.

“The application is user friendly and a menu driven. This has made it
popular among state government officials,” says Singh. The data is transmitted
from each treasury to a central server available to all stakeholders through a
comprehensive web site, http://koshvani.up.nic.in.

Ensuring Sustainability

While there has been no direct revenue generation but the reduction in
management cost, benefit of proper planning, and the advantages to the state
government have made the project workable.

“The project has been implemented with close coordination between the State
Finance Department, Treasury Directorate, and Finance and Statistics
Directorate, while the National Informatics Center (NIC), UP is providing the
entire technical support to the project free-of-cost and there is no expenditure
toward software design, development and maintenance. The complete hardware
procured for the project had been done in phases and all the systems are
scalable,” says Singh.

On the software front, “While a modular approach had been adopted in the
development of the application, any additional module can be patched to the
basic software. The complete documentation of the project is available and is
continuously updated.”

The software, at the launch of the project, was developed in Oracle 6.0, and
was later migrated to Oracle 9i running on the Linux platform. However, it is
now being upgraded to Oracle 10g, as the project moves to being a Web-based
application.

Success Parameters

“The biggest success parameter for the State is that the software has been
implemented in all the treasuries of the state and has made a huge difference.
The software also conforms to the standards, security, scalability and
reliability norms of ISO,” says Singh. We got an ISO certification in November
2004.  

"The time gap in monthly financial reporting has gone down from 2-3 months to fourth of every month" -SB Singh, senior technical director and SIO, NIC UP State Unit

“Also with the introduction of IT, the look and feel of the treasury office
has entirely changed from a typical, massive, paper loaded office to a more
comfortable office with desktops,” he says. “The impact of the project on
the treasury functioning is visible to anybody and everybody associated with the
treasury functions,” he adds confidently.Â
The number of DDOs have been reduced by 75% in totality and codified
uniformly all over the state for better expenditure control.  

Earlier, account preparation was limited to the grant and major head level
but now account information from state level to voucher level is available on a
click. All pensioners covered by public sector banks have been brought into the
ITSANIC application resulting in pension expenditure monitoring, which formed a
huge source of expenditure for the state government.

Online cheque generation is another application, which has replaced manual
cheque generation. Also, budget validation is being performed online. This has
opened a new chapter in the area of money transaction. The implementation is
also a model for other developing countries, which can benefit with its use or
an enhanced version of the same.

Team DQ

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in