Treasury is an integral part of a country’s financial system as it is the main starting point of public account. Money receipts of government are made through treasury and it is also instrumental in accounting of the government. This makes the treasury an important tool for effective management as well as for planning and decision-making. The magnitude and volume of the financial transactions in the government, both at the central and the state level, require efficient management of all data. Data entered at the treasuries become the basic input to the complete financial system of the state or the country. Efficient management of data at the treasuries is thus, crucial for sound financial management.
€| Objectives behind treasury computerization Accounts information needs to be provided on time and in proper formats. Hence, a Treasury Information System is needed that helps in managing, monitoring and analysis of various patterns of expenditure and receipts. Besides this fact, the other objectives envisaged behind treasury computerization are: • To minimise the delays in payment of bills presented to the treasury. • For timely submission of Monthly Payment Schedule and Summary Accounts to the Accountant General and the State Government. • To regularly submit the Treasury Voucher No. of the bills withdrawn and the withdrawal wise and month wise summary to the Drawing Officer and the Government, both. • To issue statement of deposits of various revenue departments, whose revenue deposits are routed through treasuries, etc.
€| Introduction and scope of ‘e-khazana’ treasury software e-Khazana, that has been implemented in Bihar for treasury computerization, is a user friendly and menu driven application software. With the implementation of this project, most of the important activities performed by the treasury have been automated. The software checks for availability of funds with respect to Bill Codes, Units and Drawing Officers prior to the generation of tokens. Flow of tokens to the user for advice generation, advice updation and putting objection to that token is done automatically. There is a provision for putting codified objections for monitoring and for on-line GPF schedule entry for all non-gazetted employees.
The automation software covers all types of recoveries and advances as well as payments and receipts, incorporating strict validations. Automatic transfer of deductions from payments to receipts is done and a monthly backup of all this data is taken. There is a facility for online query to locate a particular bill or challan. e-Khazana incorporates features for cross checking and error vaccination to remove the possibility of error during processing of data.
The software facilitates the preparation of detailed accounts for each month and its submission to the Accountant General. This process covers bills paid by banks, debit scrolls sent by banks for direct payment and vouchers from sub-treasuries (if any). The Finance Department of the state is also kept appraised through the online data transmission from treasuries to NIC-BRSC server. Other facilities provided by e-khazana include: • Submission of Treasury Voucher No. to the Drawing and Disbursing Officer. • Online entries for General Provident Fund schedule for gazetted and non-gazetted employees of the state government. • Stamp entry facilities for all denominations of stocks as well as transactions. • Automatic flow of stamp challans to receipt sections for account generation. • Annual ledger for Self Drawing Officers. • Drawing Officers’ expenditure report. • Pensioners’ status.
€| Platform/Technology This system functions on Linux based server and Windows 2000 based client. Oracle 10g has been used for the Database Management System and the front end tool is based on Visual Basic 6.0. LAN is set up at the treasury and sub-treasury level. Internet is being used for interaction between sub-treasury, treasury and finance department.
€| Future Application For making this project fully web-enabled, a comprehensive proposal for connecting District treasuries to sub-treasuries, banks, District Provident Fund offices and to Finance Data Cell Server has already been submitted to the Finance Department. Action has already been initiated for developing a website and web-based software for the project. It is planned to create an interface that will help the employees to check their bill status relating to passing, advance drawls and pot bill passing activities like the details of treasury voucher number and treasury challan number.
€| Training Eight exhaustive training sessions were conducted for the treasury officers, treasury assistants and data entry operators of all 41 treasuries of Govt. of Bihar to train them in successfully implementing the e-khazana project. More than 200 participants attended the training programme.
€| Reports generated The various reports generated by e-khazana are Payment/Receipt schedule, Payment/Receipt abstract, list of Payment/Receipt, Cash Book, Sale Tax Deposit Detail, Civil Court Deposit Detail, RBI Remittance, Plus Minus Report, DDO Wise Expenditure and Gazetted Annual Ledger.