Big data management policy for the office of controller genral of accounts

Abstract

Controller General of Accounts (CGA) in Ministry of Finance is the Principal Accounts Adviser to the Government of India and is responsible for establishing and maintaining a technically sound management accounting system. Main functions of this organisation include making government payments, collecting government receipts, accounts preparation, reconciliation, pension disbursal and internal audit. In order to discharge these functions efficiently, the Office of CGA has been leveraging technology by developing various software systems over the years. The latest of those is Public Financial Management System (PFMS), a web-based application, which is envisaged to capture all government finance related data in one platform. By virtue of bringing all the functions in one system, the amount of data being generated on daily basis is running into tens of gigabytes. As of Feb 2017, PFMS has huge finance related data amounting up to 9.3 terabytes. It is in this context I propose a Big Data policy for the O/o CGA to effectively utilize the data for identifying trends and insights using data mining tools for better financial management of government of India. In this paper, I attempted to define Big Data and its various benefits in a lucid manner specially in the context of analyzing PFMS data. Different policy options to set up a Big Data center are discussed i.e. whether to go for cloud services or set up a traditional data center, by analyzing their advantages and disadvantages. Different data mining tools and visualization tools both the open source software and proprietary software was discussed. Policy options in these aspects are elaborately analyzed. A comprehensive data sharing policy is also mentioned. Various principles to be followed while sharing data and need for setting up of a robust mechanism for sharing is elaborated upon. The capacity building and change management aspects are also touched upon. As a policy recommendation, this paper suggests that the office of CGA should adopt NIC cloud services instead of going in for data center. It also suggests that open source software tools be used for data mining and visualization purposes. Finally, it suggests to hire consultants in the initial phase for handholding and implementation, in using big data tools for the benefit of the organization.