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Special education in Odisha

Overview

The Social Security & Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (SSEPD) Department of the Government of Odisha provides grant-in-aid (GiA) to schools that serve children with special needs. These funds pay for the maintenance of residential and non-residential students, salaries for teaching and non-teaching staff, and other purposes. Over 6800 students and 104 schools benefit from this program.

Solution

MSC developed a smart payment solution (SPS) for SSEPD to enhance the functionality of the single window portal (SWP) used to monitor staff attendance and vendor invoices. The SPS consisted of three main components:

Digital data capture system (DDCS)

A digital layer on top of the SWP involving a digital attendance system and digital invoicing system. The former recorded attendance and automatically calculated monthly staff salaries, whereas the latter generated digital invoices for non-salary expenditures (e.g. uniforms, fuel).

Just-in-time (JiT) funding system

To enable instant disbursement from the treasury into the school vendors’ bank accounts, based on a virtual spending limits (similar to a credit card, instead of actual fund transfer). This allowed schools to access funds in real-time when needed.

Smart payments engine (SPE)

A rule-based engine to integrate the SWP and JiT systems, validating payment conditions automatedly based on predefined rules as per the program guidelines to then generate payment requests to disburse funds to vendors and school staff.