The Planning Department, Govt. of Manipur, is responsible for the formulation of the Five Year Plans, Annual Plans and all allied matters in the State of Manipur. It is the nodal department for monitoring all development activities in the state. It is also the state liaison department with the Planning Commission, the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) and the North Eastern Council (NEC). The manual system of monitoring the plan schemes operates with time lags and do not give a clear picture of funds remaining unutilized in a fiscal year. The absence of a system that could quickly provide consolidated or granular information on project retention, approval, fund utilization, financial and physical progress reports of projects, fund transfers or balances across schemes etc. was felt. This necessitated the development of a robust and reliable system using ICT tools to address various issues in monitoring the different plan schemes. The four main stake holders in the scheme are (a) DoNER (b) Planning Department, (c) Finance Department and (d) Line Departments. INITIATIVES In Manipur there are more than thousand Projects at any time involving more than Rs. 1000 crores per year. Monitoring schemes of this size is a huge task in terms of time and cost overrun. This became more and more difficult with the system running on stand alone computers. In order to address the current issues, Planning Department initiated for web enabled ICT based solutions to monitor these projects in an integrated manner. It was decided to implement the scheme with NLCPR (Non Lapsable Central Pool of Resources) scheme in May, 2010. The necessary funding for development of Software was provided by Planning Department. PROPOSED SOLUTION After analyzing the present system, it was decided to develop a web based S/W and host it at NIC Server and implement it by making data entry by all the stake holders, except DoNER. Planning Department will make data entry for all sanctions, approvals and release of funds made by DoNER as well as submission of Utilization Certificate, Quarterly Progress Report (UC/QPR) etc. Similarly it was envisaged that all the line departments would do data entry of their activities right from submission of DPR, receipt of funds etc to submission of UC/QPR. In short, all the required data will be made available in the server. Various reports are generated from the system which are referred by the administrative heads any time anywhere. On behalf of DoNER, Planning Department will make data entry whenever there is approval or sanction of the schemes. Security: Three layer securities have been proposed in the system. They are: - Layer-1: The S/W was designed with Role based authorisation with the provision of User ID and Password for (a) Administrators, (b) Data Entry Operators with CAPTCHA. The S/W prevents officials from one department to see the data for other department. - Layer-2: OS hardening was done at the server side. SAN with ATL is also deployed. - Layer-3: Network is also made secured with Fire Wall and IPS. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT NIC-Manipur developed the web based S/W which is hosted at NIC Server. The main activities of the departments are categorized in the table below: Department Entry Fund Authorization DPR Submission Retained Project List Entry Fund Release to Line Dept. Fund Receipt DPR Approval Expenditure Sanction UC & QPR Submission DoNER Sanction — — DoNER Release — — UC & QPR Submission to DoNER — — Platform used for development of the S/W – The software has been developed in Java /JEE (Spring Framework) as front and PostgreSQL database under Linux OS and Apache Tomcat web server. MAJOR BENEFITS - 24X7 availability of data relating to project Approval, Fund Flow, Financial and Physical progress - Timely submission of UC/QPR Dept. to Planning Dept. and subsequently to DoNER - Improved data exchange amongst stakeholders - Easy tracking of fund flow details - Retrieval of uploaded documents when untraceable - Increased reporting functions - Greater transparency and accountability - Reduction of workload The solution has been implemented in all the schemes of NLCPR in Manipur. It did not require much investment from the stake holders as it utilizes the existing infrastructure such as Manipur Secretariat LAN, SDC, SWAN, NICNET etc. ICT requirements of the main stake holders were minimal and were organized very easily. The main challenge faced was in the area of availability of data in the line departments and with the right kind of people making regular data entry. At present, the Government of Manipur has decided to fully implement the software and has issued Govt. Order to this effect. The Planning Department is also contemplating to roll out the s/w to cover all Plan Schemes such as Special Plan Assistance (SPA), North Eastern Council (NEC) and Boarder Area Development Programme (BADP) in the coming year.