Budgetary Information System

“Our cooperation with the company PosAm started in 1996, when IT support of public finance management was a relatively new topic. At that time we were using simple tools but complicated methods. Using insufficient tools, public budget formulation and adjustment were very complicated, implemented controls of public expenditures were inefficient and everything was taking far too much time. Fortunately, the situation started changing very soon,“ recalls Radovan Majerský, Director of the Budget Policy Section of the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic.

At that time, PosAm introduced the first version of the Budgetary Information System that eliminated the necessity of rewriting the budget data on paper and started developing an independent comprehensive information system designed exclusively to support public budget formulation and management.

”The year 2002 was really a breakthrough year for us, when, together with the establishment of the State Treasury, the key to successful operation of the whole public finance management system was the question of integrating the data coming from the payment system and the data generated in the budget process. The challenge was accepted

and the issue solved brilliantly by a team consisting of our experts and consultants from PosAm,“ says Alexander Cirák, Director of Public Administration Budget Department.

”There were many challenges ahead of our employees as well as our PosAm colleagues, as they were responsible for assuring high quality and effective limit management, defining clearly the structure and the processes related to the management of all seven budget classifications, facilitating and simplifying the work for the budget staff. All that needed to be done within a new transparent user interface with reliable interconnections with other systems,“ says Radovan Majerský, Director of the Budget Policy Section of the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic.

The stage of switching to the State Treasury represented a breakthrough period also as regards the changes in technology, as from that time on the Budgetary Information System has been based on a generally accepted and widely used J2EE standard.

While developing the Budgetary Information System, PosAm concentrated on making the system user friendly and operable intuitively.

At present, there is an independent module – based Budgetary Information System operating as a budget management and control tool interconnected with the State Treasury information system safeguarding data consistency in the process of public finance management at all times.

“The current version of Budgetary Information System based on central architecture with elaborate graphic user interface is becoming the center of attention of foreign visitors not only from the countries of the European Union, but also from countries in which budget methodology and practice is in the middle of the process of becoming more and more complex and outright. Our employees using the system have very promptly gotten used to its advantages – since it really is easy to get used to anything comfortable making the  everyday working life of an individual easier,” says Alexander Cirák

The interconnection with the State Treasury system offers all hierarchy levels – the Government, Ministry of Finance, chapters, organizations – a clear overview on spending of their budgets. “After more than 20 years of cooperating with our partner company PosAm and applying intensively both their domain and technology knowledge, I may claim that with the help of the Budgetary Information System we are able to process and assess information on spending coming from more than 50 budget chapters and 1,500 organizational units more rapidly and in a better way.