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Taking to electronic governance and simplifying processes, the Andhra Pradesh Government has rolled out a Comprehensive Finance Management System in Guntur and Chittoor on a pilot basis.
The System aims to make payment of salaries, expenditure and budget management, disbursement of funds for public welfare schemes and works, debt information and accounts online.
N.Chandrababau Naidu, State Chief Minister, who held a meeting with the Finance Department Officials over the implementation of the Comprehensive Financial Management System (CFMS), said in a phased manner all the districts would be covered by June 2015.
This effort is part of the State move to decentralise public finances management. This means there will be no drawing officers. Currently, the State has 40,850 drawing officers, 280 head of department (HODs) and establishment staff who are disbursing funds for 5.8 lakh employees and 2.3 lakh pensioners in the State.
The CFMS will rid the Government officials of tedious work of manually sending bills to the treasury and waiting for 4-5 days to clear them.
According to the finance department, the CFMS digitises the employees’ service register. In addition, IT would help in better planning of the State’s Budget by giving real-time information on the available finances and allot budget to sectors based on priority.
In districts, the Chief Minister suggested the appointment of a finance manager under the supervision of the collector. The finance manager will keep an eye on district finances and detect misuse and misappropriation of funds.
To train officials in handling the CFMS, employees will be imparted training by experts from NIT and Deloitte. By next year second quarter, the entire system of payments and disbursements will be online.
The CFMS will increase effectiveness of Public Finances Management, increase accountability of the government, integrate management of public finance and reduce third parties interface. The Government sees this will ensure financial discipline, improve speed and efficiency of service delivery.
Andhra Pradesh would be among first State to implement a comprehensive ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution for public finances management.
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