New Delhi: In a recent development, the Accountant General (Audit) has recommended that the Delhi government establish an online portal for real-time monitoring of action taken notes (ATNs) submitted by its departments on Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports
presented in the Assembly. Officials familiar with the matter said the move aims to streamline the submission process and address pending reports.
Currently, after CAG reports are tabled in the Delhi Assembly, they are reviewed by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). Following this, the relevant government departments are required to submit action taken reports within three months. The Accountant General (Audit) then vets these submissions within a month. However, there is a significant backlog of pending ATNs from various departments, causing inefficiencies in the audit and review process.
In light of this issue, the AG (Audit) office has written to Delhi’s Principal Secretary (Finance), suggesting the implementation of an online system similar to the Audit Para Monitoring System (APMS). This web-based tool, introduced by the Controller General of Accounts, has already been adopted at the national level to monitor audit paragraphs, PAC observations, and explanatory notes related to excess government expenditure.
To push for the development of such a system in Delhi, officials from the Accountant General (Audit) office recently met with the Delhi Assembly Speaker. In a letter to the Assembly Secretariat, the AG (Audit) highlighted that the Directorate of Audit currently collects information manually from the Accountant General’s office, which results in delays and increases administrative workload.
“Right now, a significant number of action taken notes remain pending across different departments of
the Delhi government. The manual collection and tracking of these reports require substantial manpower and time,” the letter noted.
Officials believe that a digital platform would significantly reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies and ensure timely compliance with CAG recommendations.
The APMS, which was upgraded last year, has already demonstrated its effectiveness in eliminating paperwork, improving response times,
and promoting digital governance under the Digital India initiative. It has also reduced the need to manually scan bulky documents and enabled real-time tracking of submissions.
Officials suggested that the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which developed the APMS for the central government, could customize the platform to meet Delhi’s requirements.
The proposal, if implemented, is expected to enhance transparency and improve the overall efficiency of government auditing processes in the national Capital.