Defence Accounts Department (DAD) Needs Knowledgeable Leadership
Raksha Mantris come and go depending on the political environment. However, the civilian and military leadership needs to have a continuity based on strategic thinking and foresight that places National and Military interest foremost. Given the shrinking Defence budgets, profligacy based on the political compulsions needs to be weighed in the cost- benefit balance rather than by bending and bowing to maintain one’s chair.
It is not always necessary to obey The old order changeth yielding place to new” as would be evident from an issue that led to disappointment in the decision making of the Ministry of Defence (MoD)’s primary departments that affect the present and future of serving and retired personnel are the Department of Defence (DoD)’s Defence Accounts Department (DAD) and Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare (DESW).
Department of Defence (DoD) & its subsidiary Defence Accounts Department (DAD)’s one scheme is discussed in this post with most of data obtained from the official website/portal and supplemented with information obtained through the RTI Act, 2005.
As is well known, DoD is headed by a Secretary to GoI level officer with a guaranteed 2 years tenure to ensure that he can devote his mind, vision and much else to the greater benefit of the Nation, Ministry and Department, in that order. DAD is also led by Financial Adviser, Defence Services (FADS) a Apex scale officer from the IDAS or the IA&AS.
But often without much knowledge of the how and why the Secretary, DoD & FADS is led into taking decisions that are not in conformity with the wise principle of “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’ was led into uncharted territory that are above and beyond Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules 1961.
Glaring example are the earlier Defence Pensions schemes named ASHRAYA & SUVIGYA and how scarce money has been wasted by replacing both with System for Pension Administration (RAKSHA) (SPARSH) that is still suffering birth pangs after 6 years in the formulation and implementation – classic Work in Progress.
Similar experimentation has not taken place with the scheme of pension disbursement for Central Govt's Civilian Pensioners though the process is the same.
ASHRAYA & SUVIGYA
For example, one of its DAD’s primary ‘arm’, the Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) had a smoothly running, digitally supported, twin scheme for pensioners called Ashraya and Suvigya (more details and fulsome ‘pats on the backs’ at https://cgda.nic.in/index.php?page=aashryaN ) running from 2010 onwards. Crores were spent in initiating, fine tuning and getting it to work as well as possible. The CGDA portal states (italics supplied) the working, the benefits and the advantages in the following words:
· Transparency and stakeholder participation: “Ashraya” software is very user friendly with role based authentications. Pensioner’s profile module in the system enables DPDO staff to view the complete profile of a pensioner by entering the ID of pensioner and payment history for the purpose of redressal of grievances. In earlier system the information could only fetched by writing COBOL program on every case and was dependent on availability of one technical person in DPDO office. Now, “Aashraya” has made available the pensioner’s information with every staff and officer of DPDO for faster redressal of grievances if any or otherwise with least manual effort.
· Innovativeness of the initiative and its replicability: ‘Aashraya’ has automated the disbursement of pension to 5 lac pensioners from 61 Defence Pension Disbursement (DPDO) offices across the country. It can be customised for the use of any pension disbursement agency (Post office, civil treasury, bank etc.)
The Software is:
o Intuitive, normal office staff without much computer knowledge can work on it.
o Web-enabled, can be run at dispersed locations across the country.
o Inexpensive, based on freeware platforms and developed in-house and needs minimal outstation resources.
o Comprehensive, covers all main activities of a pension disbursement office and
o Green saves lot of printing effort and paper.
· A modified PDCA (plan-do-check-act) iterative cycle was used at all stages for the development. The difference was that the users (Non-EDP task holders/supervisors) themselves were the problem-solvers, equal participants in the cycle. They concurrently did the data input and suggested further screen improvements that the programmers readily implemented. By the time the system was fully evolved, the users developed an ownership stake and their enthusiastic participation led to an implementation momentum that crashed all timelines. The result is there for all to see.
· Increased efficiency of outputs/processes and effectiveness of outcomes: This software has increased many folds the working efficiency of DPDOs staff as working on new system is very user friendly and faster. The process which took many hours now takes few minutes to finish.
I. Web Enabled User Friendly Operations: “Aashraya” is web enabled software with user friendly interface screens and navigation. Any non-technical person in DPDO can easily operate it. The operations of DPDO like generation of Pension Payment Schedule of Pensioners, MIS, Common reports and returns etc could be generated on click of button without programming knowledge
II. In-Built Help: There is in-built help for operation of every screen. There is no need for officers and staff to wait and depend on the COBOL programmer to process any transaction.
III. Pensioners’ Profile: the module “Pensioners’ Profile” gives information regarding pensioners, pension related matters and entitlements being paid. These can be fetched easily by staff and officers of DPDO for attending the grievances and its quick settlement. This has resolved the problem of earlier system where it was not feasible for staff and officers to do so.
IV. Role Based Operations: In “Aashraya” the functioning of DPDO has been made role based for various tasks and ranks as per procedures. This has induced accountability for various tasks at various ranks. Respective operators of “Aashraya” can print the record of the transactions done by them. The administrator can track the person carrying out the transaction. This has resolved the problem of single point data entry and operations by the COBOL programmer on behalf of other staff in earlier COBOL based system. The staff had responsibility without record and direct access to what had been done on their behalf.
V. In-Built Audit Checks: Common Audit Checks have been built into “Aashraya” to ensure accurate data entry and output results. These checks were not there in old system generally leading to output with lesser accuracy. Further, the manual checking of payment schedule as audit requirement in earlier system was time consuming. The “Aashraya” automatically compares the schedules of desired months.
VI. History of payments: “Aashraya” has facility to maintain the history of pension disbursement for longer periods to facilitate quick payment of arrears in the event of change of entitlements by Government and for settlement of a grievance etc. The earlier system could maintain the history of payments of pension only up to 15 months and calculation of arrears in case of change of entitlements etc was tedious manual task.
VII. Monthly Pension Slip to Pensioners through E-MAIL and SMS: “Aashraya” contains the facility for sending monthly pension slip of the pensioners to their e-mail and also on their mobile through SMS. The DPDO has to just press the button once for it.
In nut-shell, the “Aashraya” has automated the operations in DPDOs in a user friendly manner, ensured accuracy by audit checks, minimised grievances and quicken the settlement of existing grievances thereby enhancing the overall efficiency of DPDOs.
· Date of implementation of the initiative:
This project was formally inaugurated by Hon’ble Raksha Mantri Sh. A K Antony on DAD Day on Oct 1, 2010 and the completely implemented by March 2011 in 61 DPDOs. Now it is running in all 63 DPDOs.
Suvigya
Armed Forces Personnel generally retire at an early age. The pension structure compensates them for early retirement and also for acts of bravery, strain of active service and so, is very different from civil pension system. Pay Commissions and other Authorities constantly keep improving their entitlements. Hence, Defence Service Pensions are far more complex. At present, pension is being disbursed to pensioners by Defence Pension Disbursement Offices, banks, State Government Treasuries and Post Offices. They also carry out table based pension revision. While the DPDO understands the technicalities of pension, being part of DAD, other agencies, especially bank branches have limitations. Our experience at the Pension Adalats has been that most of the issues in pension arise at the bank level. In this back drop project SUVIGYA is a total in-house designed and developed Pension enquiry System, was taken up in July, 2010 with a view to empower the pensioners to know what their correct entitlement of pension is from time to time. It is a web-technique based system. The system requires very few basic inputs from the pensioner. Once data is entered software calculates the pension and changes to it from time to time. Pensioner can get a print out of inputs provided by him and of the outputs generated by the system. If a pensioner finds his/her pension actually paid or being paid is less then the results given by the system, he/she can take up the matter with the Pension Sanctioning Authority or Pension Disbursing Agencies for rectification.
To the best of our knowledge, no other Government department has so far established such a comprehensive and interactive Pension Enquiry System. We have provided e-kiosks at various DAD and Service secured locations accessible to the pensioners. For computer-shy pensioners, we have trained the concerned officials of DAD, Zila Sainik Boards and other offices where e-kiosks have been provided” (emphasis supplied)
SPARSH
With re-naming existing schemes and replacing older working schemes with ideas implemented without much thought or tested being order of the day, the then Finance Minister, who was also Defence Minister who was also ailing spoke in Parliament in the Finance Budget 2017-18, inter alia, “126. A comprehensive web based interactive Pension Disbursement Scheme for Defence Pensioners will be established. The system will receive pension proposals and make payments centrally. This will reduce the grievances of defence pensioners.” (Reply to RTI vide File No. PENS-5702/2/2022-PENS/RTI dated 10.08.2022).
Then Defence Secretary either did not know that a web based scheme already existed or that it could be modified/refined with minimum expenditure instead of introducing SPARSH as this would lead to being profligate with the taxpayer’s money from a dwindling Defence Budget. Obscured in the political fog, existing system was uprooted and supplanted with a clone with minor variation but major glitches and a grandiose acronym.
Thus the DOD/DAD was saddled with seeing through a web based scheme, as if it was some new thing for the defence pension disbursement through System for Pension Administration (RAKSHA) (SPARSH).
SPARSH claimed it would provide Right Pension at the Right Time https://www.sparsh.defencepension.gov.in/?page=aboutUs. A reading of the website would prove that SPARSH is nothing but a clone of Ashraya & Suvigya and that it needs the expertise of Tata Consultancy Services, a premier IT service provider to iron out the glitches at an additional expense of Rs 160.22 crore of which Rs 95.76 crore has been paid (PENS-5702/2/2022-PEN/RTI dated 28.08.2023.
Further, SPARSH relies, as did ASHRAYA & SUVIGYA, on the banks to disburse pensions to pensioners. PCDA (P), the foster parent, does not have an independent banking system to pay the pension to any Defence pensioners directly.
SPARSH made operational about 6 years ago is based entirely on the electronic connectivity of India which is poor in rural India (A Survey on Rural Internet Connectivity in India - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9668358; S. K. A. Kumar, G. V. Ihita, S. Chaudhari and P. Arumugam, "A Survey on Rural Internet Connectivity in India," 2022 14th International Conference on COMmunication Systems & NETworkS (COMSNETS), Bangalore, India, 2022, pp. 911-916, doi: 10.1109/COMSNETS53615.2022.9668358.)
An abstract is re-produced below: -
“Rural connectivity has been a widely researched topic for several years. In India, around 50% of the population have poor or no connectivity to access digital services. Numerous technological solutions are being tested around the world, as well as in India. The key driving factor for reducing the digital divide is to lower the cost of network deployments and improve service adoption rate by exploring different technological and economical solutions. This survey aims to study rural connectivity and create awareness about the use-cases, state of the art projects and initiatives, challenges, and technologies to improve digital connectivity in rural parts of India. The strengths and weaknesses of different technologies tested for rural connectivity are analysed. The study includes a brief discussion of rural connectivity trials performed in India and around the world. We also explore the rural use-case of the 6G communication system, which would suit the rural Indian scenario.”
What is the grass on the Govt’s civilian pensioners side of the fence?
Central Pension Accounting Office (CPAO)
CPAO was set up in 1990 (https://cpao.nic.in/wp-content/themes/innovation-extend/pdf/Brochure%20-%20CPAO%20Office.pdf) for disbursing pension to (presently 14.18 lakh) Central Govt pensioners and carries out its functions without the need to “Fix some thing that is not broken” by then Finance-cum-Defence Minister. Perhaps the Secretary level bureaucrat resisted any tinkering because of the political repercussions and the maladies that SPARSH is visiting of Defence Pensioners and Family Pensioners.
In Conclusion
So what has been achieved?
Profligacy at tax payers expense just to show that something (replacing the old scheme with an ill functioning new scheme) for Defence Pensioners but not even fiddling with pension disbursement scheme for Civilians.
E & O E
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