United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

In Egypt, there are more than 2400 accounting units all over the country. Having this huge number of accounting units makes it hard to perform the following tasks in the manual system:
• Following-up the daily operations done in the accounting unit
• Monitoring who did which tasks
• Storing and retrieving enormous amounts of paper forms and registers.
• Consolidating the monthly, quarterly and annual balances of related accounting units.
• Consolidating the monthly, quarterly and annual balances of the government.

There were several negative aspects regarding the Manual System:
• The system required the Re-entry of data for revision and monitoring which required more time
• The Slow paper flow between offices and departments extending the work cycles.
• The difficulty in preparing consolidated reports and historical data in a timely manner.
• The difficulty in archiving and retrieving data.
• The Huge physical space required to store the forms and the registers and record the transactions.

The Egyptian Government is comprised by very large organizations that have several departments and systems where the interaction between them has to be managed toward a common purpose to achieve the organizational goals. This was a serious problem where the information flow is restricted by functions.

The scope of this project is to deploy automated financial applications in 1600 medium-to-large accounting units. The implemented systems integrates all required financial data and processes of an organization into a unified system to help in streamlining the information and sharing information as a mean of improving the internal administrative process within the government (G2G) or from administration to Another (A2A).

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
1600 Accounting Units Automation Project integrates all required financial data and processes of an organization into a unified system to help in streamlining the information and sharing information. The project involves several modules including Budgeting and Accounting systems. The financial applications – accounting and budget – were deployed successfully in 122 accounting units nationwide. The key benefits of the financial systems are directed to the decision makers in the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the top management, and employees of the accounting and budget departments. The projects allow more intergovernmental cooperation with a more collaborative Information Management System. To mention some of the enhancements, the day closure statement is now generated from the system in a few seconds compared to two hours in the traditional manual system. Previous to the project, the work cycle in the budget department used to take around one day to list the expenditure by each budget line. Currently it is automatically generated from the system in just a few seconds. Moreover, there are some added values to the employees themselves. They feel more empowered using the new technology. They get their work done faster and more accurately. Transparency is enhanced as well; The system provides information about who did what and when. This helps monitoring employees and assessing their work quantity and quality. The implemented project fulfills many objectives like reducing the use of paper forms, providing the necessary infrastructure required for workflow functionality between different modules, and analysis reports to enhance government performance through a unified and standardized interface. Such systems help in consolidation, integration and aggregation of data. The project created an improved communication platform within the whole government sector. The impact is measured by the reduction in time in each process as per the table below: Department Function Time Before Time After Accounting Day closure 2 Hours 10 Seconds Accounting Year closure 15 Days 2 Minutes Accounting List letters of guarantee that need renewal 1 Hour 10 Seconds Budget Values spent for each account 4 Hours 1 Minute In Brief, the project contributes to providing an improved system with faster and more efficient work cycles and work flow within the government, cutting time, reducing error and non-value added activities.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The project was first initiated by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in 2001 where the prototype was implemented in 2002 and the roll-out phase started in 2003. According to a signed Protocol between The MCIT, The Ministry of State for Administrative Development (MSAD) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) the ownership of the project along with team working on it was transferred from the MCIT to the MSAD where the project was sustained, tested, and deployed to cover ministries and major financial units in Government. The financial applications were deployed nationwide to automate the back office applications in 1600 government units.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The MSAD plan is to modernize the government and standardize the functions and methods of the financial and administrative units at the various government departments and entities. Deploying automated workflows in such an approach ensured control and continuous audit leading to better planning of resources in a timely manner. Thus, this will qualify our administrative and accounting units to integrate with international systems on a global level for future information dissemination or even for benchmarking purposes. The Project Strategy was as follows: • The Project was studied and initiated by the MCIT • The project went through a pilot phase for testing which encouraged MSAD, later on, to adopt the project and implement it all-over the government accounting units. • The roll out of the project started in 2003 through a signed Protocol between three Ministries : MCIT, MSAD & MOF (as the business owner) • The MSAD partnered with Private sector (Oracle and Giza Systems) to provide the necessary Oracle licenses with a good discount to governmental accounting units while ensuring a sustainable technical support. • On-the-job training and support is provided by the implementing company (Giza Systems) for government employees to ensure their alignment with the new automated system and reduce resistance to the new systems. Some of the Project Objectives are as follows: • Provide the necessary infrastructure for the government to plan and use its financial resources • Reduce the use of paper forms • Provide workflow and data analysis techniques to enhance government offices performance • Provide unified modules throughout the government. Making it ready for consolidation and aggregation. The strategy was put by the following key persons: • E-Government Program director of MCIT (Before 2004) • Government Resources management Program Director of MSAD (After 2004) • MOF Full Automation Project Manager

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The Project's RFP was submitted by the MCIT in 2001 where 3 Private Sector companies were contracted. The prototype implementation in MCIT started in 2002 where the Roll-out phase started in 2003 till the whole project and the team working on it was transferred to the MSAD in 2004. The projects go through the following implementation steps: • The Site preparation (LAN, Hardware) • Automation modules installation • Providing employees with the required awareness and training. • 3-Month on-site implementation • Provide 1 year of warranty • Optionally sign maintenance contracts with companies. The following graph shows the geographical distribution of the deployment sites: At any of the implementation sites, the accounting units are prepared by themselves or by the help of specialists from the MSAD to establish a local area network (LAN), provide a server, PCs and printers. MSAD then provides the necessary database licenses and application licenses. Eleven days of application training are provided to the system users, followed by three-month on-site operation. By the end of these three months, a full one year of warranty is also provided.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The implemented systems created a state of indifference from employees resisting the new changes. Among the main obstacles encountered by the project were the state of readiness of the infrastructure at the different government units, the lack of unified records, forms and systems at the different accounting units, employees' resistance to the new systems implemented and lack of communication lines and channels between the related units. There were steps taken to overcome such obstacles as illustrated below: • Holding Awareness Sessions and Workshops along with the required Training to the different managerial levels (For Support) and employees (For Support & Implementation) • Promoting change by providing different incentives and preparing employees to become good users and good agents for change. • Careful selection of the initial team members in each accounting units as they are required to be technology supporter and a good user. • Involving the users in preparing the sites and making the departments ready for the project (LAN, PCs, Servers, …) • Partnership with Oracle to provide inexpensive licenses to different applications. • Partnership with Giza Systems to provide training and support of the automated systems. Well-Designed applications to enable the consolidation between units.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Being a National Project, the Total finance for the project was done through the MSAD as part of the National Budget. So far, a total of 12 Million Egyptian Pounds were spent for the deployment of the financial applications. Moreover, MSAD provided some accounting units with servers, PCs, and local area networks. The automated systems, software packages and solutions, licenses, and technical support were provided by Oracle as part of their partnership with MSAD.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Currently, a committee between MSAD and MOF works in modifying legislations to enable accounting units to fully use the automated systems without the need to use the manual system in parallel. Research and Studies are being conducted to use the systems with low priced database licenses to be able to implement in more locations and sites. The project is a national project and is part of the president election program which ensures the required support for sustainability and replication. The project has proven successful to the extent that is being referenced by Giza Systems as a business model to be replicated in other Arab countries.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The introduction of a unified financial system to the government to replace an ample of independent processes eliminates the need for external interfaces and multi-systems and applications previously deployed. Applying the project in the government sector provides additional benefits that range from standardization and lower maintenance (one system instead of two or more) to easier and/or greater and more accurate reporting capabilities utilizing one database while reducing error and increasing efficiency, credibility and accessibility for employees to their own records. The project was implemented successfully in the current sites due to the following success factors: • The support of the Presidential Committee. • Top Management Support & Follow-up. • Partnering with the Private sector and learning from their expertise (PPP). • The Skill & Experience of the MSAD team and the workforce designing, implementing and maintaining the projects. • Well designed training and orientation programs for the employees to be able to make the system work correctly. • Employee's Participation guaranteed high Buy-In and better Implementation.


Institution Name:		Ministry of State for Administrative Development
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Amr Ibrahim
Title:		Project Manager
Telephone/ Fax:		0020224000175
Institution's / Project's Website:		0020222628003
E-mail:		aibrahim@ad.gov.eg
Address:		13 Salah Salem
Postal Code:		11763
City:		Cairo
State/Province:
Country:		Egypt

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information