IAF's Equipment Accounting Goes Paperless

New Delhi, Mar 18 (UNI) Defence Minister AK Antony today dedicated the Equipment Accounting On Line System (EQUOLS) to the Nation at a formal ceremony here.

The Marshal of IAF Arjan Singh, Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Fali H Major and Chief of Army Staff General Deepak Kapoor were present on the occasion.

The Indian Air Force holds a diverse fleet of aircraft, radars and various other associated equipment requiring an automated IT-based material management system to account for its inventory and stores.

The IAF's Accounts branch along with the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have developed a material management system based on Information Technology called 'EQUOLS' which supersedes the earlier tedious and cumbersome method where all transactions were recorded manually using vouchers, manual stock record cards and the like.

The EQUOLS system would be advantageous from the point of view of transparent, accurate and faster transactions and at the same time providing for online auditing and provisioning of realistic future demands.

In his address at the ceremony, Minister Antony stressed the need to encourage Military-Industry partnership and strengthen indigenous capabilities.

EQUOLS has been implemented in two phases -- the pilots site and sense-phase site. The initial implementation was at 27 pilot sites whereafter the application was installed at the remaining sites.

So far, over 17.5 million entries have been transferred from manual records to the EQUOLS application over the past six months.

The transferred data has been subjected to ''a very thorough scrutiny'' by the staff of the Defence Accounts Department, according to an official spokesperson here.

UNI DG YA AS1506