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

Rolling out the IFMIS system beyond core central level ministries to the various levels of government
needs to be planned in distinct phases with a long-term plan. The needs assessment should help form
a preliminary idea of these phases, but the Road Map will set the triggers and milestones that need to
be attained in order to ensure that the long-term plan is carried out. This is not only important to
reassure donors of the value of their initial investment, but also to enable them to measure progress
into the future and to plan future critical investments as deemed appropriate.
STEP 3 – THE MODIFIED TENDER APPROACH
Once an agreed upon Roadmap is in place, the next step is to prepare the tender. Yet before the tender
is issued, the stakeholders have to work out the overall cost of the exercise.
All installations are comprised of the same basic components:
1. Intellectual input;
2. Software;
3. Hardware;
4. Training; and
5. Support.
From the initial needs assessment, the project team should know the approximate size of the user base
and the various profile types that will be required. This provides a good estimate of the basic software
profile, the licensing requirements, service costs, and annual maintenance and support fees. The
hardware costs are also easy to calculate.
The needs assessment should show the amount, types of training required, and the time frame
required—again, a simple calculation. The support related to software and hardware should be fixed
in the hardware and software costs.
The technical assistance inputs, from CoA design and business process re-engineering, to testing and
configuration, to training and change management are the variables on which most projects stumble,
for the timeframes cannot be easily fixed. In Vietnam, four years have been consumed by CoA design
and consultation, and still the issue is not resolved. In Slovak Republic, a turf war between the
Central Bank and Ministry of Finance over debt management nearly derailed the IFMIS process.
Indeed, there are myriad issues that, even if carefully analyzed during the needs assessment and
contemplated in the Roadmap, require long, drawn-out negotiations that can break a project by delay
upon delay. This is why Government IFMIS projects should be broken into discrete packets—
established from the needs assessment and laid out in the Roadmap.
By adopting a modified tender approach, the IFMIS project can be surmount the hurdles that have
been described in this report. It would provide the donor with an interactive role with the
beneficiaries, establish clearly what needs to be done to put into place an IFMIS, setting local
standards to meet the multiplicity of the objectives.
STEP 4 – IMPLEMENTATION
The final and most critical step of any IFMIS project is Implementation.
PART 3: BEST PRACTICES 27