Integrated Financial Management Information Systems: A ... - Frp2.org

On this basis, a CoA was developed, agreed on and adopted using the old Yugoslav model. The CoA
conformed both to local requirements, and to international standards, such as those of the IMF and the
EU. This gave the new Kosovar administrators a familiar set of rules and regulations by which to
work, while also meeting international requirements.
At this stage in the implementation process, a meeting was organized to present the complete new
system to financial and executive personnel of all of the municipal administrations in the
parliamentary assembly hall. After the meeting, comments were received, certain minor changes were
made, and the system configured.
The program for the Kosovo roll out included:
Systems demonstrations to show the functionality to future users;
Training workshops for both senior administrators and managers and for general staff; and
Change management workshops;
Connection of all budget organizations to a central database through a Wide Area Network
(initially the UNMIK WAN). Municipalities were the first users to be connected to the system
due to their geographic isolation from Treasury regional offices and the desire for decentralized
operation of certain financial management functions.
The data originally entered into the system during the emergency phase were migrated to the new
CoA and the system gradually expanded as the different municipalities were brought on line. As the
system expanded, a significant training program was undertaken, with all current users of the system
having been trained by local staff, funded predominantly by the Swedish International Development
Agency (SIDA).
The other major challenge was political, that of addressing the three Kosovo municipalities that are
majority Serb. The IFMIS implementation team adopted a non-partisan approach, configuring the
system and disseminating all documents and information in Albanian, Serbian and English. As the
system incorporated the Yugoslav CoA, the new system allowed Serbian municipalities to extract and
communicate their financial data to the Serbian Government in Belgrade, which after the war
continued its financial support to the Serbian communities in Kosovo. So, even reporting and
accounting were made easier with the introduction of the new IFMIS, which was configured to work
in multiple languages depending on the user’s system profile.
The core system was up and running in all three languages in 2003 and has been expanding in
functionality ever since. The CoA has been progressively updated to reflect the growing
sophistication in financial management and reporting and to achieve greater conformity with the
IMF’s Government Finance Statistics. All 80+ Kosovo budget organizations, including existing and
new municipalities, have been added to the system and there are over 650 active users.
In addition to the “foundations” general ledger module, “revenue”, “asset management”,
“purchasing” and reconciliation modules have been added to the system and a direct interface
established with the central bank for electronic payments. Kosovo has now reached the point where
all revenues and expenditures are transacted via bank transfers, completely avoiding the use of cash.
In some cases, Kosovo was the first to implement certain features of FreeBalance and played a
significant role in developing workable configurations and solutions that have been copied in other
developing countries using FreeBalance.
Kosovo’s Treasury Department and FreeBalance have formed an agreement under which FreeBalance
funds local staff who work actively with the Treasury to manage and troubleshoot the system. This
PART 2: COUNTRY CASES 19