So far, 350 departments are on the paperless and faceless e-Bill system that was rolled out last year, enabling online bill payment and tracking, Somanathan said at a function to commemorate the Civil Accounts Day here.
“We now need to get all of the rest (department) also, as soon as possible and definitely before the next Civil Account Day,” he said.
Somanathan said savings in interest costs on account of the public financial management system (PFMS) and single nodal agency (SNA) will surpass ₹10,000 crore in FY23. “We will surpass the savings made last fiscal,” he said.
He added that it is time for PFMS to transform from a data rich system to a data intelligence system.
The finance secretary cited the example of how data analytics had helped the Centre to detect that some states were parking money from a single nodal agency (SNA) bank account to some other bank account, which is prohibited under law.
“In the SNA system, payments are supposed to be made only for final use and not to be transferred into another bank account for parking,” he said. “With some data analytics, we have found that some states have sometimes transported money from an SNA bank account to some other bank account.”He added that in some cases, it may be an innocent mistake but that also needs to be “identified and corrected”.
“And these kinds of analytical reports that have been designed (are) helping us to catch these things before they become very big,” Somanathan added.
He said work on a model to capture and track physical assets is in an advanced stage of development, which will allow digital recording and tracking of physical assets.
