CIOIN

M. Prabhakara

Director of treasuries, Karnataka

Executive summary

The  Karnataka's government's  treasury department wanted to remedy  check-mate inefficiency, data inaccuracy and the misappropriation of funds at the department level.  Also, the treasury wanted to monitor the movement of cheques - thousands of them simultaneously, and report on the what, where, why and how of the taxpayer's money being spent, and the Khajane network helped.

Inaugurated in July 2003, Khajane aimed to remove basic systemic deficiencies by harnessing high network availability and accessibility, and creating pinpoint accuracy by replicating all existing treasury data into master files. While digitizing the treasury data into master files was the foundation for developing an efficient funds management system, the exercise of budget control was done through a streamlined online budget system (OBS). "A real-time online budget system, introduced in April 2004, was one of Khajane's killer apps," says Prabhakara.

The network routes the payment of about 14 lakh social security pensions to widows, destitutes and the physically handicapped. Kubera's validation engine mandates bill clearance from all 216 treasuries, generating department- and district-wise MIS reports. "Data is uniformly replicated across all locations on the network. This uniformity and a fully-automated application engine have facilitated the access and verification of accounts at any time." attests Prabhakara. The application is password protected and enables user-defined access function. The process is further  tightened by maintaining a user-wise transaction log on the central server.

"The agreement to set up a state-wide money control network was signed with CMC and STPI in 2001. The first version of the application software for the network was developed by CMC and was ready by November 2001. From December that year, we did a pilot which continued till May or June 2002," says Prabhakara. The pilot was done at Tumkur, Hubli, Shigaon in the Haveri district of Karnataka and the Bangalore Urban district. "Deficiencies noticed during the pilots were corrected and incorporated in the next software versions," Prabhakara says.

The first edition of the application software was up and running in October-November 2002. While content management planning is an essential part of all G2G service architectures, they rarely result in a total revamp of the fund disbursals and accounting system. This was a revolution that the Rs 72-crore (initial cost) Khajane initiated. Capacity-building was a bottom-up initiative.

In the first phase, LANs were set up at local treasury sites to create a shared-services network. "We then connected the treasury sites with the state WAN powered by a VSAT backbone. We also set up 'Lakshmi', our mirror site in Dharwad, to serve as a disaster recovery site for the project," says Prabhakara. The high-speed state WAN proved to be strong incentive for government departments to port their data onto Khajane, he says.

For example, Bhoomi, the trendsetting land record registration project, and the state commerce department's VAT system use the network extensively. Kubera, the central server, is the interlocutor in the high speed flow of work between different state departments and the treasury, which is linked with district treasuries running on Unix servers. Win 2000 servers run the sub-treasury servers.

Integration through master-data management took up at least 60 percent of the project time, says Prabhakara. About 2.5 lakh government employees, mostly school teachers, were among the first to be covered under the scheme. Former Karnataka IT secretary and a guiding spirit behind the network, Vivek Kulkarni, says that Khajane's success is powered by two key factors: "The network helped save a lot of money by accounting government spending and returns. Khajane also put in place a real-time balance-sheet for drawing offices across the district and sub-treasuries."

Khajane's next phase will incorporate a database of pensioners before 2002, in addition to managing the annual influx of 11,000 to 12,000 pensioners onto the treasury rolls. For, when money is all about cheques and checks, a strong dose of network helps.