The Punjab government has signed an agreement with the eGovernments (eGov) Foundation to build a first of its kind fiscal information exchange platform to enable better management of public finance in the State. The platform will facilitate real-time availability of financial information to stakeholders for data-driven and efficient deployment of public funds and policy making.
The not-for-profit eGovernments (eGov) Foundation was founded by Nandan Nilekani and Srikanth Nadhamuni in 2003.
“An extensive diagnostic study has been conducted to understand the public finance challenges of the State and how modern-day technology can become an enabler to resolve them. Over the next two years, with the implementation of this platform, the State aims to build tools to monitor and track its financial health by building agility to adapt to dynamic and evolving needs such that available funds can be deployed actively to meet its development agenda and priorities,” State Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan told The Hindu on Saturday.
Ms. Mahajan said the vision of the project was to make Punjab a “lighthouse State” for effective public finance management by building resilient and efficient technological tools.
“The new platform will enable need-based, effective and performance-driven financial planning at all levels of government. This will provide greater levels of flexibility to the government with the available funds and provide the State with all the information required to realise its development goals,” she added. The platform is being co-designed by the Punjab government and eGov with the support of subject matter experts from multilateral organisations and public policy consultancies. The project is in sync with the data-driven governance mandate under the Punjab State Data Policy, 2020.
