E-monitoring of govt projects worth over Rs 10 cr mandatory: Delhi govt

Days after Lt Governor VK Saxena directed for signing of "integrity pact" for projects worth more than Rs 10 crore, the Delhi government has made it mandatory for their monitoring through an app and tying bill payments on timely updates of progress of all such projects and work, officials said Friday.

"No payment will be released if progress is not updated on the fortnightly basis for each project," stated a Finance department document.

All projects worth more than Rs 10 crore will be monitored through the e-monitoring mobile app and it will be mandatory for the heads of departments concerned to ensure that all such projects are logged timely into the app," said the order issued Thursday.

According to the document, drawing and disbursing officers (DDO) and pay and accounts officers (PAOs) will be "personally responsible" to ensure this and will accept bills only if accompanied with a copy of status report generated from the e-monitoring mobile app.

The departments and agencies of the Delhi government will come up with appropriate login IDs for officials concerned to enable them to update the real status of the projects, the officials said.

The e-monitoring app was launched by the Information and Technology (IT) department of the Delhi government last year for monitoring of the projects and tasks related to various other departments, they said.

The IT department through an office memorandum earlier this month had requested all the administrative secretaries and head of departments under Delhi government to roll out the system without fail, they said.

Proper and timely execution of projects and tasks related to them across the city is a necessary requirement for desired results and meeting limits of budget allocations, said a senior government officer.

The e-monitoring app was developed on the instruction of the chief secretary, to attain this goal, they said.

The app has been designed with various modules for tracking the projects such as creating new projects, updating meta data like budget allocation, expected timeline of completion, periodical inspections, tracking of tasks among others.

The module will help in conducting general field inspections by the officials on a range of matters like unattended garbage on roads, poor condition of government buildings, absent employees.

The observations and findings of officers during the field visits can be logged on the mobile app.

The IT department has also provided a user manual to the departments to help them work with the app.

In a bid to ensure transparency in government projects, the LG earlier this month had made it mandatory for an integrity pact between the departments concerned and vendors in all project contracts exceeding Rs 10 crore.

It was also directed by him that independent, external monitors will be appointed by the departments concerned to check execution of such contracts.

The threshold for the integrity pact has also been scaled down to Rs 10 crore from an earlier Rs 50 crore to ensure greater transparency, officials added.