Major schemes of nine departments, including Health, Higher Education and Public Works, will come under a concurrent monitoring and evaluation system from the current financial year.
Five schemes, each of the nine departments with substantial financial outlay, will be picked for constant real-time scrutiny to check graft, curb irregularities and procedural lapses, avoid fund diversion, for expeditious execution, optimum fund absorption and timely completion.
The new system is expected to act as a panacea to inefficiency, cost and time overruns and also as a corrective force for real-time analysis of the programmes.
The move assumes significance in the wake of surging complaints over the delay in executing projects and the huge drain it incurs on the State exchequer.
A team constituted for evaluation will liaise between the government and the implementing agency or department and will eview the execution process and also look into the suggestions of the beneficiaries too.
A real-time evaluation will help to analyse the inputs given and also the outcome from time to time, so that a course correction will be easy too. This is also being experimented as a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis.
Status report
On the basis of field reports prepared by officials of each department, the Finance Department will prepare a status report. On detecting grave irregularities in implementation, it will be reported to the head of the department concerned and the administrative department will initiate action and furnish an action taken report.
Time and again auditors, mainly the Comptroller and Auditor General, have raised concerns about the tardy implementation of schemes, diversion of funds and laxity in expending the sanctioned funds within the prescribed time frame.
Almost all departments have drawn flak for the inept handling of funds, including Plan funds and laxity in furnishing utilisation certificates (UCs) in time. The inordinate delay in providing UCs even had a bearing in the allocations from the Centre for various welfare schemes.
The CAG report on State finances for 2016-17 had pointed out the lapses of the district administration in utilising the Asset Development Fund of MLAs and had mooted a monitoring system to ensure the timely utilisation and accounting transactions.
The corrective measure is expected to improve the efficacy in project execution, sources said.