J&K first to launch online audit application for its line departments

JAMMU, December 23: Chief Secretary, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta today launched the online application for conducting statutory audit of accounts of it’s line departments.

The meeting was attended by the Principal Secretary, Jal Shakti; Principal Secretary, PWD; Commissioner Secretary, IT; DG Budget; DG Audit & Inspections and other concerned officers.

Dr Mehta commended the local Audit department for developing this facility. He observed that it will make the process easy and more focused. He advised the department to keep balance between post audit and concurrent audit of  accounts.

The Chief Secretary remarked that the system should be made more reliable and productive in terms of outcome. He asked them to forward the new audit manual which includes e-audit to all the offices so that they are made aware about the new systems.

The Chief Secretary also enjoined upon them to link the same with e-office so that officers have insight about the relevant reports and pending audit paras. He maintained that this mechanism should ensure that the audit is more thorough and comprehensive  even if the auditors do not visit the auditees physically. He told them to make it both efficient in terms of quality of audit and management of time.

It was given out that it is an integrated single platform tool for access of Financial Information of government departments that even provides access to and use of data from BEAMS/PaySyS as an additional tool.

It was further revealed that this web based audit gives intelligible insights at all stages in an amenable and analytical manner. It aids in seamlessly mapping  both Auditor and Auditee besides managing audit teams and define audit schedule.

Moreover it generates audit reports as per configurable report templates available in PDF that can be shared with users through email. Email based alerts on regular update(s) are also sent to auditees for their information and necessary compliance, as was informed on the occasion.

The online audit Platform facilitates audit as per the defined process. The software also acts as a repository of records related to audit and is a good financial audit tool that considerably improves transparency & accountability, the meeting was informed. All communications relating to audit shall be made through this system which shall bring in much needed accountability.

Pertinent to mention here that earlier during 2019-20 Government of India had launched the online audit used primarily to carryout financial audit of accounts at all the three levels of Panchayats viz District, Block and Village Panchayats, Urban Local Bodies (ULB) and Line department by Auditors and J&K is the first among States/UTs to launch the same to audit its financial accounts of all the line departments.