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INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON HIGHWAYS RELATED ACTIVITIES AND
REQUIREMENTS OF THE OFFICE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOFTWARE AND NETWORKING
1. introduction:
1.1
Ministry
of Surface Transport(MOST) consists of two departments viz. Department of
Shipping & Department of Road Transport & Highways.
1.2
Department
of Road Transport and Highways is responsible for development, construction and
maintenance of National Highways(NH) and Highway Research. Construction and maintenance of National
Highways is the major responsibility of this department. These activities are carried out by this
Ministry with the help of State Govt. and autonomous organisations such as
National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
Organizational Chart of administrative control of Deptt. of Road
Transport and Highways is presented in the form of Annexure-I.
1.3
National
Highway related activities are governed by National Highway Act, 1956. According to which, it is the responsibility
of Govt. of India to construct and maintain National Highways. However, this activity may be carried out
with the help of agencies as per Section 3 of this Act. Accordingly, this work is assigned to State
Public Works Departments (PWDs) for the part of National Highway falling under
the boundaries of respective states.
Govt. of India (MOST) is primarily making policy related to National
Highways and monitoring the construction and maintenance of National
Highways. To carry out this activity,
there is an office of Director General-Roads [DG (Roads)], headed by cadre
controlling authority of Highway engineers who is responsible to provide all
kinds of technical inputs required in the field of Highway construction and
maintenance. Technical feasibility of
the project is primarily ascertained and approved by O/o DG (Roads) whereas
financial feasibility is ascertained by Internal Financial Advisor (IFA). Approvals are done in accordance with
Delegation of Financial Power Rules (DFPRs) and General Financial Rules
(GFRs). Once the project is found to be
feasible and viable; technical, administrative and financial sanction is accorded
by MOST and communication to this effect is made to respective State Govt./UTs
and all concerned.
1.4
Any
Highway related project is prepared by concerned State / Union Territory PWD
and submitted to MOST. O/o DG (Road)
does technical evaluation of the project.
Financial analysis of the same is carried out by IFA. Ministry, then, issues sanction to
respective offices / organisations. Once
these sanctions reach concerned State / UT PWD, work is started by them and
expenditure is incurred out of their own funds (On Account Payment is released
to State Govt. / UT to provide them leverage to incur such expenditure). After
exercising all the checks, claims are raised with concerned Pay & Accounts
Officer (PAO) working under Chief Controller of Accounts (CCA), MOST. These claims are submitted by State
Accountant General (AG) after compiling the monthly account received from
concerned PWDs. PAO exercises all
prescribed checks in accordance with the approved procedure of 1977 (as
approved by Controller General of Accounts (CGA) and Comptroller and Auditor
General of India(C&AG)) and orders and instructions issued by O/o CCA and
MOST from time to time. Flow chart of
these activities is appended as Annexure II.
1.5 In the existing Payment Procedure, work was being executed by
State PWD, out of its own funds. In
several State Govts., there is a severe crunch of availability of resources
which has adversely affected the execution of NH related works. In several cases, it has been observed that
even the On Account Payment released to State Govt. is diverted for other
purposes. Over and above these
drawbacks, existing procedure allows reimbursement only after the lapse of
three months. Therefore, the entire
cycle of payment and execution is delayed.
To solve all these problems, Direct Payment Procedure has been attempted
whereby payments will be made directly by MOST, Govt. of India.
1.6
Direct
Payment Procedure has been tried in Punjab during 1999-2000 for Externally
Aided Schemes and similar procedure was followed in 8 States during January to
March 2000 for Special Repair programmes.
Now, with the approval of CGA and C&AG, it is intended to implement
a revamped Direct Payment Procedure in 14 States after completion of necessary
formalities. This procedure is likely to be implemented through out India in
due course. Procedure as approved by CGA and C&AG is appended as Annexure
III. In this procedure stage of project
approval will remain unchanged whereas payment to State PWD will not be made in
the form of reimbursement, rather, it will be paid directly to them. Therefore, State PWD will get the work
executed / will execute the work and prefer the bill to Drawing and Disbursing
Officer (DDO) of MOST. Regional Officer (RO) will act as DDO. He will submit
the bill to Regional PAO (RPAO) for payment.
Payment will be released by RPAO and parties concerned will get the due
payment through State PWD. Therefore,
in this procedure, no fund is required to be available with State PWD for the
execution of National Highway related projects. A manual has been devised delineating the responsibility of DDO,
RPAO and State PWD along with the registers and forms required to be maintained
/ filled by them. It is appended as
Annexure IV.
1.7
Currently
National Highway related projects are approved, sanctions are issued and
payments are released manually. There
is no automation done for these activities in any of the activity centers. Some minor Work is done in an independent
from in Excel or Word. There is no
structured database available. Only
data base which is available in the O/o CCA is of the details of payments made
head-wise which contains compiled information of all head of accounts of
Ministry of Surface Transport. Hence,
whatever database or system available may be practically considered as
irrelevant for NH works.
2. REQUIREMENTS:
2.1
It
has been observed that in this entire process, there are several redundant
activities, which are not only time consuming but also result in Duplicacy of
work. In order to make the process of approval of project, monitoring thereof,
release of funds and accounting and budgetary control more effective, it is
necessary to have a centralised database and networking between all the centers
of activities. It needs no emphasis that activities carried out by this office
and various other offices requires to be streamlined and automated to the most
feasible extent. Enormous data is available in our offices without any
linkages. Data management is done manually; hence advantages of correlation between
data are not derived. In an automated environment several manual records may be
dispensed with as similar records are being maintained separately by different
wings of MOST.
2.2
It
is evident that there are 6 major centers of activities under Govt. of India in
the system of project approval and payment etc. of National Highway. These are O/o DG (Road), Deptt. of RT&H,
IFA, O/o CCA, PAO and DDO (RO). Activity centers are located in New Delhi and
major state capitals. It is proposed to
have a network connecting all the 6 above-mentioned activity centers with two
centralised database located at Delhi. One database will be available in the
server of Parivahan Bhawan, MOST (New Delhi).
Whereas another database will be available in the O/o CCA at Jam Nagar
House, New Delhi. Both the database may
be inter-related and data may be inter-changed within the defined
parameters. Cases of project approval
will move through computers and movement of paper will not be necessary. All related data required to be captured
from the project reports submitted by State PWD will be captured centrally in
Delhi. This data will contain entire
technical detail of National Highway including approved rates, quantity and
quality as per various schedules of PWD as adopted by MOST. Modules related to financial analysis will
facilitate financial appraisal of the projects. Therefore, entire project may
be done without involving any paper work.
Hence, office may be turned into a paper less office.
2.3
In
the case of existing payment procedure, claims received from O/o AG in the form
of monthly accounts will be the source of input in the O/o PAO. All relevant data will be captured locally
in the O/o RPAOs and after doing necessary checking, payment will be released
by PAO to State AG.
2.4
In
the case of direct payment procedure, bills will be received by RO and all the
relevant records will be entered locally in the O/o RO. Data so entered will get compared with the
approved data, which is already available in the server of MOST. This comparison will ensure that no excess
is allowed either in the budget or in the materials. This activity may be carried out without intervention of human
beings. RO will scrutinise the bills
and forward them to RPAO for payment.
Relevant data will be captured in the O/o RPAO and pre-check will be
done before releasing payment. There
again, all the standard and low level decision making activities may be carried
out in an automated environment.
2.5
In
order to facilitate development of the new system, it is essential to conduct a
Software Requirements Study (SRS).
2.6
Its
purpose will be to systemically describe the S/W requirement and provide
information required for fulfilling accounting, monitoring and NH project
related information needs of MOST.
2.7
This
document should serve as a reference for design, development and implementation
of application S/W for MOST. It should
also serve as a basis for estimating the effort involved in the complete
computerization of all the accounting and other activities of MOST (related to
Roads and Highways).
2.8
It
should describe the functional requirements, external interfaces, inputs and
outputs of the system, flow of data, identified entities and attributes.
3. INPUTS:
3.1
Following
documents would be made available to firms in order to have better
understanding about Ministry and system being followed in National Highway
related works and accounts.
(i)
Annual
Report of Ministry.
(ii)
Relevant
pages of Accounts at a Glance.
(iii)
Accounting
procedure of 1977.
(iv)
Direct
Payment Procedure.
(v)
Manual
of Direct Payment procedure.
(vi)
Copy
of sample sanctions.
3.2
Further
clarification on requirements etc. would be done on 24th, 25th and
27th Nov. 2000. Firms may seek clarification in writing or in person
the same day.
3.3
Once
contract is awarded firms may have access to other official documents and may
interview the concerned and mutually agreed officers other than the designated
co-ordination officers for this purpose.
4.
OUTPUT
4.1 Software Requirements Study Report
conforming to IEEE 830-1993 or 1998 has to be submitted within the agreed time
schedule.
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