The Odisha Government is set to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into the state's financial auditing mechanism so that there is greater fiscal accountability, effective resource management and increased productivity.

As per the New Indian Express's report on Sunday, the Directorate of Local Fund Audit (DLFA) has commenced work on the AI-driven project as a bid to technologically enhance organisational accountability and create greater trust on government institutes of the state.

The project already has appointed an expert, Professor Sanjay Mohapatra, Information System Department, XIMB institute, as an advisor to oversee the project's successful implementation for robust automation of the local auditing system. Prof. Mohapatra will assist the Local Fund Audit (LFA) to create effective strategies for the implementation of the project and help the organisation undertake a comprehensive analysis of the processes. Additionally, he will also advise the LFA on the right kind of training and skilling of the officials for the AI-enabled automation.

The project will see the implementation of various AI components such as machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing and computer vision. The combined technologies will help LFA classify and rightly categorise documents, extract relevant information and perform data analysis. Machine learning modules will further help auditors detect potential frauds and deep learning will analyse unstructured data. Financial statements can be automatically used to calculate on several benchmarks.

“AI will help auditors optimise their time, enabling their ability to judge and analyse a deeper set of data besides making it possible for them to work smarter and better,” said an official involved with the project.

Odisha has 13,606 auditee institutions that are subjected to audit by the LFA. These institutes include the Government, grant-in-aid institutions, Panchayati raj institutions, Urban Local Bodies, Development Authorities and Universities besides schools, colleges and endowments.

The government hopes that the implementation of AI will ease the auditors' jobs by evaluating thousands of documents and help them execute investigations effectively. “After skilling officials with basic and applied concepts of AI in local fund audit, the project will be implemented on a pilot basis before making it universal,” the official concluded.