EPFO wins National Award on e-Governance for UAN

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has won the National Award on e-Governance 2015-16 for launching the Universal Account Number (UAN).
EPFO has won the gold award in this edition of awards in the ‘innovative use of technology in e-governance’ category and will get a cash prize of 2 lakh rupees.
The award will be bestowed upon EPFO by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions in the 19th National Conference on e-governance to be held in Nagpur.

Universal Account Number (UAN)

• The roadmap for implementing the UAN programme has been prepared by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
• Purpose: Facilitates workers in organized sector to transfer their provident fund deposits while switching jobs anywhere in India easily.
• The UAN would be one account number which would be allotted to a subscriber for various schemes run by the EPFO for his or her entire service period with different employers.
• Working: Under it active employees in organized sector are provided with universal number which can be linked to various provident fund account numbers provided to them after switching jobs by different organisations. Thus, a single account number can be used throughout workers’ employments with various organisations.
• Benefit: UAN will help to reduce the workload of the EPFO to a great extent as it receives over 12 lakh claims for transfer of PF account on changing of jobs by its subscribers.

About Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)

• EPFO is a statutory body of Union Government that comes under the aegis of Ministry of Labour and Employment.
• Headquarters: New Delhi.
• Functions: Administers a compulsory contributory Provident Fund Scheme (1952), Pension Scheme (1995) and Insurance Scheme (1976).
• It is one of the largest social security organisations in India in terms volume of financial transactions undertaken and number of covered beneficiaries.