Centre will Move to Evidence-Based Policy Making by 2022: PM

NEW DELHI: The NDA government at the Centre will move to evidence-based policy making by 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday while addressing an accountants general conference at the comptroller and auditor general headquarters here.
The PM said bringing transparency and efficiency in governance is important towards achieving the goal of making India a $5 trillion economy and CAG plays an important role in making all stakeholders accountable. He urged the supreme audit institution to adopt best practices followed internationally and make stakeholders accountable in India through its audits.
The PM lauded CAG’s new approach and reorienting its audit practices to outcome based audits. He said this will play a vital role in correcting government policies based on outcomes achieved. He said his government is committed to digital governance and has ensured that money is transferred directly to beneficiaries under 425 central schemes, eliminating any scope of leakages. He said the government has so far saved more than Rs 1.5 lakh crore in leakages.
PM Modi acknowledged CAG Rajiv Mehrishi’s suggestion that several departments in the government are not sharing data with each other and assured the auditor that his government is trying to ensure that inter-departmental data sharing is enabled and also to be made available to the CAG for auditing. The PM said big data analysis is important to correct anomalies in government policies and schemes.
He suggested that the CAG should develop tools that can help government departments in devising policies and detect frauds in implementation of schemes.

Speaking on the occasion earlier, CAG Mehrishi said the auditor has embarked on outcome based audit practice that has thrown up surprising data. He quoted from a latest report on audit of district hospitals in UP where it has found that these hospitals are not capturing data on neo-natal deaths.
He also pointed out how the data on government’s flagship MGNREGA scheme has format which makes it difficult to ascertain irregularities at the local level. He suggested a standard format and digital entries by the scheme implementation agencies at the local level that can bring in more transparency.

Source: ToI

Image Courtesy: Indpendent