The IT systems of India’s largest retirement fund, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), are under severe strain, causing significant operational disruptions, including pension and PF processing.
The EPF Officers’ Association has highlighted this persistent issue in a plea to Labour and Employment Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, expressing their escalating frustration with the unstable IT infrastructure that has plagued their operations for over two and a half years, reports The Hindu.
Although the EPF Officers’ Association has repeatedly flagged critical deficiencies in the EPFO’s IT systems to the Central Provident Fund Commissioner (CPFC) over the past 30 months, these warnings have largely gone unacknowledged, leading to a worsening situation.
In their communication to Minister Mandaviya, the EPF Officers’ Association called for a comprehensive evaluation of EPFO’s application software by leading industry experts. They stressed the urgency of overhauling the IT system to improve stability and performance.
The association pointed to rapid technological advancements in other government departments, such as the Income Tax department, highlighting the EPFO’s systemic failure to recognise and address the severity of the situation.
Frequent crashes, slowdowns, involuntary user logouts, and complete failures characterise the system’s instability.
The inefficiency of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) digital infrastructure has created significant obstacles for employees attempting to manage several Provident Fund and pension applications.
Staff members frequently report technical issues, and the performance of the organisation’s software has noticeably declined, even during periods of lower usage. As a result, there have been substantial delays in processing applications, with many offices facing difficulties adhering to the prescribed 20-day processing timeline.
To mitigate the impact of the IT failures, field officers have resorted to extraordinary measures, including working on weekends and holidays to process clams when the system load is lower. The association argued that a fully functional software system would exponentially accelerate the claim settlement process, significantly improving efficiency.
With more than $209 billion in assets under management, faulty IT services will hinder the organisation’s efficiency, and it is the Indian citizens who will ultimately suffer. Due to misgovernance and bureaucratic red tape, it is quite disheartening that an important organisation like EPFO is suffering. Moreover, untimely IT service management can also lead to potential cybersecurity incidents in the future.
In the News: Hacker groups found abusing Google Cloud for credential phishing
