IT for National Importance

Prudent financial management

E-Lekha is a prudent financial management application. It provides an electronic payment and accounting information system for the Civil Accounts Organisation with the objective of improving efficiency and accuracy of the accounting process.

Built in and around the COMPACT application running at Pay and Accounts Offices and other offline interfaces, it provides a system of core accounting with integration of daily, monthly and annual accounting processes for near real time value added reporting and financial monitoring and control.

The objectives of the project were to integration applications by preparation of accounts from one central database, provide a comprehensive IT-enabled core accounting solution, improve accounting process efficiency and to create a secure system with enhanced transparency.

Process
The software is positioned at the lowest level of accounting and helps in optimum utilisation of financial resources as well as for monitoring social plan projects initiated by various ministries/departments of the Central Government. At the lowest level of this system, runs an application called COMPACT. This is a client server application, which runs on servers in each Pay and Accounts Office and in the offices of all the ministries across the country.

Accounting personnel are given access to the COMPACT server, where they can record the expenditure of that particular office for that day.

At the end of the day, a single tamper-proof file is generated from the COMPACT system, which is then uploaded to the e-Lekha server using its web-based interface. By this process, e-Lekha gets all the daily fiscal data from each office across the country. Ministries can also use this system to monitor their fiscal health for the year, month or on a daily basis.

They can also monitor how their allocated budget is being used in various projects and schemes. Each ministry then submits the monthly account through e-Lekha, which is then accessed and compiled at the Government of India level.

Impact
The solution has facilitated the daily reporting of the expenditure vis-à-vis budget position at the lowest level of accounting, resulting in optimum utilisation of the resources for effective monitoring of social projects initiated by various ministries/departments of the central government.

It is capable of providing on daily basis the expenditure and receipts position of the government to enable the managers to reassess the budgetary allocation with reference to achieving the laid objectives of the government. It gives unprecedented control to each controller over its budget allocation and transparency in the working of pay and accounts offices along with speed and accuracy in the compilation of accounts.

e-Lekha application along with COMPACT is a generic application and can be easily replicated by other state governments and ministries. e-Lekha is already being replicated and used by the State Government of Delhi, Department of Telecommunications, Andaman and Nicobar Administration and Lakshadweep Administration.