Central Pension Accounting Office (CPAO), which came into existence with effect from 1st January 1990, authorizes civil pensioners retired from central government excluding Railways, Telecom, Post and Defense Pensioners. Along with Civil Pensioners, it authorizes former Presidents/Vice Presidents, Ex-MPs, Central Freedom Fighters, All India Services (IAS/IPS/IFS) Pensioners and Pensioners of Delhi Administration. The Accounting and post auditing of the pension disbursed and reimbursed is also done by CPAO.
CPAO is provided with budget grant of the order of about Rs 5250 crore every year. Pension disbursal is done through 31 Authorized Banks, which have 245 Nodal Branches, 2800 link branches and over 20,000 paying branches. CPAO deals with 486 Pay & Account Offices (PAO) and other offices all over India. Annual Processing of 30,000 to 35,000 Pension Payment Orders (PPOs) is done. CPAO receives around 50,000 bank scrolls per annum for processing and compilation of expenditure. The quantum of work detailed above is handled in an efficient & smooth manner through extensive of ICT with active support of NIC.
€|NIC established ICT Centre at Central Pension Accounting Office (CPAO) in January 1990 to achieve following objectives . To have Centralized Control over the pension payments to the Central Civil Pensioners by the Public Sector Banks. . To simplify & reduce the number of agencies for pension payments and transfers. . To speed up the process of authorization, revision and transfer of pension through Public Sector Banks. . To expedite compilation of monthly accounts. . Preparation of Budget & Appropriation Account of composite pension grant and Finance Accounts. . Post Payment test check of pensions as well as disbursed through public sector banks. . To create the databank of Pensioners for MIS and Statistical Reports.
With the introduction of New Pension Scheme, CPAO has been declared as Interim Central Record-keeping & Accounting Agency (I-CRA) with following objective.
With the objective of Total ICT based functioning of CPAO, following Applications Software has been developed and implemented
€|Pension Accounting & Retrieval System (PEARL) PEARL manages the process right from receipt of pension’s case at reception to Receipt & Dispatch Section to its processing, which includes authorization, printing of Special Seal Authority and dispatch of case to the concerned bank. PEARL software maintains the database of post 1990 pensioners only and is now being redesigned using 3-tier architecture to take care of new business requirements.
€|Public Interface for Pensioners Pensioners of various categories like Fresh Pensioner Case, Revision of Pension, Transfer of drawl of pension from Treasury to Bank, Transfer of drawl of pension from PAO to Bank, Family Pension, Commutation to Pension can check their status from website http://cpao.gov.in which is updated on daily basis. Apart from this pensioner’s can get the status enquiry from Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS).
€|Interim Central Record-keeping & Accounting Agency (I-CRA) I-CRA software has been developed which accepts the data of newly recruited employee in electronic form. It keeps the general information of such employees and also receives tier-I deductions & government contribution every month. It calculates the interest on Employee contribution as well as Government contribution and generates the annual statements for all such employees.
€|AG Pensioners Management Information System: Some of the pre-1990 pensioners have been taking pension from treasuries of the state government. Pension released by Treasuries are compiled by respective Account Generals of the states and the claims are sent to CPAO for reimbursement. This software, developed using 3-tier architecture maintains the record of such pensioners received from treasuries and details of the claims received from AG offices. The re-imbursement of amount to the AG is regulated based on this database.
€|Compilation: Banks, which disburse the pension, submit their claims every month. This software records bank-branch wise scroll summary and compiles against the put through received from GAD & CAS.
€|Databank: Some of the pre-1990 pensioners have been taking pension from bank and not much record for such pensioners is available with CPAO. This software maintains the record of such pensions as received from banks.
€|100% Electronic Exchange of Data with Banks: The entire data exchange between CPAO and bank is proposed to be electronic. CPAO sends the PPO data to bank on electronic media thus reducing the time and efforts of data entry at bank. Similarly, the scrolls are received from banks electronically, compiled at CPAO and 100% post audit for the pension paid is done.
NIC-CPAOD has setup this model office where from receipt to dispatch, the entire processes are computerized and movement of PPO is tracked at any stage.