1.
Introduction: Ministry of Rural
Development (MoRD) of Government of India is responsible to formulate policy
for the development of rural India and promote the welfare of its rural people. The
vision and mission of the MoRD is sustainable and inclusive growth of rural
India through a multipronged strategy for eradication of poverty by increasing
livelihoods opportunities, providing a social safety net and developing
infrastructure for growth. In this process, it runs several people-centric
schemes through the States (sub-national) Government. These schemes have a very
elaborate process and offer benefits to marginalise and poor of rural India. MoRD
has huge budget outlays of more than Rs.1220 billion. Flagship Schemes like
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has
financial provisions of more than Rs. 800 billion and affecting the lives of
more than 120 million rural poor. To ensure that benefits are transferred to
intended beneficiaries, many accountability matrices have been put in place.
Risk-Based Internal Audit (RBIA) is one such mechanism. Risk management
including identification, prioritization and mitigation of risks for these
schemes is important to ensure transparency and accountability.
2.
Challenges
to conduct RBIA: Under the existing manual
system some of the bottlenecks were as follows:
a. There
are more than 4000 audit units expected to be audited. Due to limited
resources, selection of sample and identification of teams through a manual
system becomes very challenging. Conducting audit and follow up is also very
difficult. Further, the details of auditee units used to be collected manually
and entire scheme details, demographic particulars of and listing of
decision-makers of the auditee were collated in physical files after reaching
the venue of the auditee. This process was very time consuming and many details
were either missed or collected incorrectly.
b. The
paper-based system was not amenable to easy monitoring and does not support
institutionalizing good governance practices. The movement of paper/file across
the various levels in a department was time-consuming, cost-inefficient and
caused undue delay in initiating corrective action. Follow up action was slow
and therefore, fixing accountability was tough.
c.
Mistakes are
committed repeatedly, year after year across the offices and the manual systems
are not equipped to cross-check across different offices and schemes.
d. Lack
of quantification and consolidation of reported loss due to poor execution or
compliance failure by the Program Implementation Agencies.
3. Development of
GRIP: To address these core issues, a portal namely GRameen Internal audit Portal (GRIP) was developed,
tested and deployed. An effort was made to automate process flow for
two leading schemes namely MGNREGS for employment and Pradhan Mantri Awas
Yojna- Grameen (PMAY-G) for rural housing.
a. GRIP
is a web-based portal that can be accessed from anywhere. It is used to conduct
RBIA even at the level of lowest level implementing agencies such as Panchayati
Raj Institutions (local self-governance bodies).
b. It
can cover all 722 districts across India involving around 5,500 blocks having
around 2,50,000 Panchayats (lowest level of elected body). As of 1st
January 2020, it covers 23 States in their 55 districts and more than 200
blocks. Inclusion of new districts and blocks is increasing day by day.
c.
During the process of development of GRIP, the entire process of
Internal Audit has been re-engineered. An Internal Audit report generally has
18 to 20 observations. In the manual process, unless the entire Audit report
gets prepared, it will not move for the approval process across the various
levels/actors of the Audit Department, thereby leading to delay in the process.
However, the new automated system, flexibility is provided in such a way that
either single observation moves forward and other are kept on hold or a
multiple/ complete set of observations are moved forward simultaneously as per
the workflow.
d. The system can bifurcate observations and move
only the approved observation forward to the next level/actor and unapproved
observation move to backward level/actor as per workflow, on which further
clarifications may be required This has led to increase in efficiency which
reflects into the increased output.
e.
With GRIP, the report not only remains in the system and visible to
the auditors and auditee it is also sent electronically for necessary action. In
the re-engineered process, reports are now available on a single click of a
mouse. This system facilitates to view the entire trail of the history of the
audit conducted under any scheme and for any audit. Further, this system also
facilitates analysis of the reports under the same scheme or as per demographic
variations.
f.
Under the new system, old reports may be taken to the GRIP portal. It
facilitates the monitoring of the old audit observations and analysis of the
findings of the audit conducted in the past. Monitoring of closure of audit
observations can now be done easily. Auditee response is also online through
the portal. GRIP portal generates reports and graphic representation of
non-responded observations leads to the improvement of follow up. Automated
reminders are sent to the auditee through e-mails.
g.
GRIP is customized for RBIA of schemes, risk matrix has been uploaded
in it, it generates risk category wise reports also i.e. how the observations
of the same risk vary between various Audit units. This comparative data analytics
strengthens the decision-making process and improves the implementation of
programs.
h. This
application has been developed in a generic way where both types of Audit can
be configured viz., Internal or External Audit.
For catering to various aspects and requirements of Audit, any depth of
process flow can be handled, and any department/scheme/program can be
configured in the simplest way possible. The application is web-based and can
be easily accessed online.
i.
It allows
designing the forms for Case Record and Fact Sheet easily and dynamically
keying in the formulae’s and necessary fields with required validations. It
facilitates generation & download of various graphical reports in PDF and
Excel formats for easy analysis and monitoring based on customizable Report
Templates.
j.
It captures the complete process of the audit and enables reply and follow up instantaneously
and amenable for analysis and monitoring.
5. Benefits of GRIP:
a.
GRIP
has re-engineered the internal audit process flow. It has reduced unnecessary
manual work. 24*7 availability has led to increased efficiency. Before GRIP, it
used to take about 2 months to complete an audit against 15 days taken to
complete an audit approval process. It has increased in efficiency by about
400%.
b.
It
has led to an increase in the number of total internal audits conducted in a
year from 23 (2015-16) to 108 (2017-18) and further to 112 in (2018-19).
c.
Coverage
of districts covered after the launch of GRIP has increased from 23 to 78. Till
now a total of 81 audits have been conducted in GRIP raising total 1162 audit observations.
d.
Internal
audits conducted on GRIP have pointed out irregularities in various risk areas
of scheme execution. In case of MGNREGS, it has indicated blockade/ parking of funds
of about Rs. 460 million, the inadmissible expenditure of about Rs. 3.3 billion.
For PMAY-G scheme, GRIP has pointed out more than Rs.102 million idle government
funds parked in different banks and inadmissible expenditure of about Rs. 204 million.
e.
MGNREGS
scheme is a poor centric scheme and cash benefits must reach to the targeted
beneficiaries in time. RBIA has taken delay in payment as one of risk area and
analysed the reasons. It has led to an improvement in timely payments from 20% of
transactions in 2015-16 to more than 82% in 2019-20.
f.
Office printing has a huge environmental cost.
One A4 sheet uses 0.5 litres of water. One tree is cut down for 9000 A4 sheets. The manual process of conducting around uses around 1,200 pages. Thus, 81
Audits conducted through GRIP have saved about 97,200 pages equaling to 11
trees and 48,600 LTRs. of water. Its replication in all schemes of civil ministries of Government of India
alone will result in saving of 2,560 trees and 11.5 million LTRs. of water.
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