A pat on the back feels great, especially when you know you deserve it fully. Let us share this sense of fulfilment in what Mr SK Aswathanarayana, Special Officer (Computerization) of the Finance Department, Government of Karnataka, has to say of the services rendered by the Karnataka Unit of NIC to his Department.

With the introduction of computer culture in the various departments of the Government of Karnataka, towards which the contribution of the National Informatics Centre, Bangalore, is immeasurable, the Finance Department decided to computerize its major activity viz. the preparation and publication of the Annual State Budget. A computer cell was set up in the Department on June 1, 1991. The necessary hardware was installed by the National Informatics Centre, Bangalore. The Centre also developed a comprehensive software package for the purpose of budget computerization. A massive database was created and the Government took a decision to computerize the budget for the financial year 1992-93 straight away without resorting to any parallel arrangement. All the major budget documents for 1992-93 were brought out in the computer for the first time with both Kannada and English descriptions side-by-side. The following advantages have been accrued as a result of budget computerization:

i. values have been expressed in lakhs of rupees, thus enhancing the readability.

ii. perfect alignment of descriptions in Kannada and English of the Heads of Account, thus eliminating errors due to parallax and proximity;

iii. uniform pattern of exhibition of heads of account, and abstracts of provisions in all the documents;

iv. splitting up of budget volumes into conveniently smaller volumes catering to allied departments;

v. elimination of inoperative heads which were repeating year after year in the manual system;

vi. considerable savings in the consumption of paper;

vii. total elimination of protracted movement of data from the Finance Department to the Government Press and back till the final proofs were ready, which was inherent in the manual system consuming considerable man-hours;

viii. facility for changes in the budget data even at the last stage, and ensuring automatic consequential changes at all levels;

ix. storage of budget data created year after year, and their preservation for future use in conducting all types of analyses involving budget provisions and outlays.

x. the State Government has also embarked on computerization of the accounts of all its treasuries. The account head codes available in the computerized documents will be of immense advantage in this regard. When the treasuries start rendering computerized accounts, it is proposed to link the treasury computer system with the budget computer system for purposes of efficient management of state finances.

The Government of Karnataka is indebted to the Karnataka Unit of the National Informatics Centre, Bangalore, without the dedicated involvement of which all these could not have been realized. During the peak budget period, the staff of NIC worked day and night with the staff of the Finance Department. The success achieved is thus a product of perfect teamwork between the staff of the Finance Department (Computer Cell) & the staff of NIC.