Govt revamping internal audit protocols to cater for increasing digital payments

Vijay Mohan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 1

As government financial transactions increasingly move into the digital mode, the Ministry of Finance is revamping its internal auditing procedures and tools and standardising them across all ministries and departments.

The Department of Expenditure has asked the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) to improve upon and augment the current auditing practices using the latest domain technology and to develop a standard internal audit protocol for all ministries and departments, sources have said.

“Over some time now, we have witnessed considerable changes in the mode of financial transactions on the expenditure as well as receipt fronts, with the focus being on electronic payments,” a senior government officer said.

“The Public Financial Management System (PFMS) and the Non-Tax Receipt Portal (NTRP) have become major repositories of electronic data relating to government finances and hence there is a need to re-look at our systems and tools for conducting e-audit,” he added.

The PFMS is a fiscal initiative that monitors programs in the social sector and tracks funds disbursed for various schemes and projects to ensure that public money is spent according to its intended purpose. The NTRP is a 24x7 online window to make various kinds of payments into government accounts of any ministry or department using internet-based payment technologies.

According to available information, PFMS has hit about 66.60 crore transactions involving a sum of Rs 12,75,980 crore so far during 2020-21 fiscal. The NTRP’s count is about 29.5 lakh transactions amounting to Rs 5,07,671 crore.

The Internal Audit Wings of ministries and departments are responsible for conducting their own audit of various schemes and projects. The protocols, methodology and IT tools used for audit are different.

The CGA has sought details from all its field establishments about the IT tools and procedures being used by them for conducting scheme audit and risk-based audit so that these can be studied for developing a standard internal audit protocol.