What is SPARSH?

[Indian]

About SPARSH​

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Project SPARSH​

• The System for Pension Administration (Raksha) (SPARSH) is an initiative of the Ministry of Defence which aims at providing a comprehensive solution to the administration of pension to the defence pensioners in line with the vision of the government of India of Digital India, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) and “Minimal Government, Maximum Governance” as envisaged in Para 126 of the Budget Speech of 2017-18
• “A comprehensive web-based interactive Pension Disbursement System for Defence Pensioners will be established. This system will receive pension proposals and make payments centrally. This will reduce the grievances of defence pensioners.”
• At the centre of this initiative is the Defence Pensioner who will be given a completely transparent view of his pension account through a platform which will capture and maintain a complete history of events and entitlements the pensioner right from the date of commencement of pension to the date of cessation of pension due to his/her last eligible beneficiary.
• This system will be administered by the Defence Accounts Department through the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions), Prayagraj and shall cater to all three Services and allied organisations. The system will initially cater to the new retirees on the rollout and subsequently be extended to cover the existing defence pensioners.
• The system would cater to all activities of the pension cycle namely:
  1. Initiation and Sanction
  2. Disbursement
  3. Revision
  4. Service and Grievance Request Management
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The system will interface all the stakeholders and provide a single source of truth thereby ensuring transparency, accountability and ease of doing business through information dissemination, SLAs for various activities and simplification of pension processes through Business Process Re-engineering(BPR). The system will consist of two portals one for the pensioner(SPARSH portal) and the other for pension processing( SPARSH Back Office Portal). These portals will have a mechanism for data exchange between each other at set intervals so as to keep the stakeholders updated.

The SPARSH Portal​

• The SPARSH portal is established with the objective of empowering a Defence Pensioner with regard to his pension account. This is a step towards disintermediation of services. This portal ensures that the pensioner is in control of his pension account right from the time he applies to avail his pension. A person whose pension is due is onboarded on the portal at the time of processing of his pension claim. The Pensioner is allotted a unique account number once his digitised audited pension claim is ready for forwarding to PCDA(Pensions) for the issue of a Pension Payment Order. The Pensioner is informed of this account number on the mobile number/email address furnished by him at the time of furnishing his pension claim which he can use to onboard on this portal. Once the Service Record Holder and the corresponding Pay Accounts Office prepare the pension claim it is made available to the pensioner on the portal for verification. This process is called Pensioner Data Verification (PDV). PDV ensures that the pensioner has the final say with respect to the information furnished to the Pension Sanction Authority. The Portal also enables the pensioner to furnish the requisite declarations/ nominations/requests for commutation. The portal also provides the option to the pensioner to use enabled services for quicker processing of his requests and signing of declarations making his experience a truly paperless and hassle-free one.
• The SPARSH Portal provides the following facilities to the Pensioner
  1. Identification and furnishing of Life certificates through Manual certificate-based process or Aadhaar Based Digital process.
  2. Management of Pensioner’s Profile
  3. Disbursement related services
  4. Service Requests
  5. Interactive Grievance Management
• The Portal features a simple and user-friendly interface which can be used by the pensioner. A mobile application has also been envisaged to access the services. The pensioner will be notified of events through his registered mobile/email address.

SPARSH Seva Kendras​

• The SPARSH Seva Kendras are points of contact for the pensioners to avail of the services that are available through the portal. These centres will provide interface and assistance to the Pensioner in the event of the non-availability of portal access.