The story so far: The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) recently sent a text message to its subscribers that it is undertaking a “planned database consolidation and upgradation of software applications”. As part of this transition, it said, member services such as claim submission and download of passbooks are temporarily unavailable from June 26 to July 1. As part of the Centralised IT-Enabled System (CITES) project, the EPFO’s effort is to modernise its service delivery mechanism through automation and rule-based processing. Designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, the project aims to improve operational efficiency. The EPFO is hopeful that the revised mechanism will make the services more transparent, and subscribers will receive seamless services.

The EPFO is facing several technical and procedural delays in member services, such as the submission of claims for deceased members and the presentation of life certificates for pensioners. At present, the EPFO has a decentralised system with separate databases in each field and regional office. The members are tied to one regional office. In many cases, even retired beneficiaries had to go to the regional offices in jurisdictions where they had worked to submit claims or clear technical problems. Beneficiaries of deceased members also had to approach the respective regional offices for pension or other claims. The operations are primarily done by more than 120 decentralised databases at present, with no central visibility. There have been complaints that the account operations are “employer-centric” as for the majority of the claims, authorisation of the employer was necessary.