Antony to release vision document to mark Defence Accounts Day tomorrow

The Defence Accounts Department (DAD) is celebrating the Defence Accounts Day tomorrow. The Department has a history of over 250 years, beginning with the appointment of Commissary General at Fort William Calcutta in January 1747. During this time DAD has developed into a fully professional and competent work force providing a wide range of services. These include financial advice, payment, accounting, internal audit and prompt, effective and accurate management information services to the Ministry of Defence, the three Services, and allied organizations like Ordnance Factories, CSD, Military Farms, DRDO, Border Roads Organisation (BRO), Defence Estates, Coast Guard and NCC. Apart from this, officers from the Indian Defence Accounts Service (IDAS), including lady officers, are deployed with the Indian troops on UN Peacekeeping Missions in various troubled spots of the world where they provide valuable financial management, accounting and payment support. Today the DAD has 998 offices spread over 258 locations in India.

The Department handles an annual budget of Rs 1,81,306 crores (2009-10), which accounts for 26% of the total non-plan outlay of the Government of India. In the present day situation of austerity and prudent management of finances of the country, the role of the Department as an expert Defence Financial Management agency has become important. The DAD has been at the forefront of adopting the best financial management practices. It has been a pioneer in adopting computerization and ISO quality certification of many of its offices.

The mission of the Department has been to provide quality services with focus on 3 E’s – Efficiency, Effectiveness and Economy, with added components of innovation and promptness. To maintain a fine balance between these objectives and meeting clients’ aspirations is a challenge which the Department has met with full competence, despite manpower shortage of over 30%. The Department provides all these services at an extremely low cost of merely 0.55% of the Budget handled.

The Department has made effective contributions in planning and implementing the New Management Strategy of the Government of India since 1990s. With the delegation of financial powers to lower formations in the three Services, the role and responsibility of the officers of the Department as Financial Advisors has become very crucial. The Integrated Financial Advisors (IFAs) play a very important role in ensuring value for money in Defence procurements. This coupled with prompt payment, accounting and effective internal audit checks place unique responsibilities on the Department.

To keep abreast with the latest national and international management practices the Department has maintained the profile of a “Learning Organisation”. It has an extremely dynamic, vigorous and effective Training and Development Policy which is implemented through a strong network of training institutes. These include the apex National Academy of Defence Financial Management (NADFM) Pune, five Regional Training Centres, two Regional Study Centres and one Defence Pensioners Training Institute at Allahabad. Additionally the Department has sponsored officers for training in reputed institutes like IIMs, Indian Institute of Public Administration Delhi, National Defence College Delhi, Defence Services Staff College Wellington and Administrative Staff College Hyderabad. Officers are also nominated for pretigious courses in foreign training institutes like the Royal Institute of Public Administration (RIPA) London, Global Training Consulting London and International Law Institute Washington.

The DAD is at the forefront of adopting the best and the latest management practices in the world and continues to innovate. Towards this objective the Department has adopted a Vision Document which will be released by the Defence Minister Shri AK Antony tomorrow. The document mainly emphasizes on Organisational Restructuring, Human Resource Development Strategy and ICT strategy.

The Department has been very constructively associated with the Government Accounting Standards Advisory Board (GASAB) which is developing Accounting Standards for implementing Accrual Accounting system in the Government. The DAD, which was among the pioneers in the Government in the field of automation with the introduction of Hollerith Machines in 1931, has continued to keep abreast with the latest in Information Technology. It has an effective in-house computerization programme. Most of the functions are already computerized. The Department has video conferencing facilities at seven sites in the country and has Wide Area Network and Virtual Private Network at over 150 sites. The Headquarters office of the CGDA and many Controllers offices in the field have websites with latest information on Government orders and other relevant data. The Department has made significant progress in implementing e-payment system in close coordination with the RBI, SBI and other Banks to electronically transfer payments.

The Department is fully committed to ensuring the satisfaction of not only serving but retired personnel also. Pension is sanctioned to about 60,000 personnel every year and is distributed to over 22 lakh pensioners. The Department handles the defence pension budget of Rs 21,790 crore (2009-10). This coupled with the pension for defence civilians constitutes about 62% of the total central government pension. There is a comprehensive system of grievance redressal of pensioners and regular defence pension adalats are held in different parts of the country for on-the-spot settlement of problems.

PK / RAJ
(Release ID :52900)