The leave Processing System (lPS), which was implemented in the State Secretariat as a common application of the Odisha Secretariat Workflow Automation System (OSWAS), is yet to deliver its purpose of proper handling of employees’ accounts; instead, it gave rise to several deficiencies.
The lPS was implemented in all the departments but was found configured only for 2,017 out of 7,205 users. The TCS developed an incomplete application without required integration with core applications which gave rise to several deficiencies, revealed a CAG report laid in the State Assembly recently.
As departmental hierarchy was not linked with the lPS, it was marked that 128 employees were not correctly linked to their approving officer, but linked to officers outside their department. Due to this, 13 employees had applied for leave on 43 occasions but their leave application could not be approved in the OSWAS.
Similarly, inaccuracies occurred in the leave accounts of 813 cases, and to rectify the same, departments had to depend upon the manual system and to duplicate their work in feeding the leave data online.
The system showed an incorrect closing balance of leaves. While leaves like earned leave and half pay leave are closed every half year with credit of 15 or 10 days, respectively, the database analysis revealed that there was no such provision of preserving half-yearly balance in the database through which leave ledger accounts of El and HPl could not be generated.
As the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) was not done for the lPS, the State Government’s leave Rules were not mapped to the lPS. The leave types defined in lPS did not include leaves like leave not due, special casual leave, child care leave, study leave, special disability leave and quarantine leave. Similarly, rules for proportionate credit of leave in earned leave account in case of employees availing half pay leave/extra ordinary leave, advance credit of half pay leave/earned leave were not found mapped in the design of lPS.
Due to deficiencies of lPS, the departments had to maintain the manual system of leave account, thereby maintaining another set of leave data in electronic form without use.
The concerned department stated in May 2016 assured that steps would be taken to design the system as per relevant rules of Government.