| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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e-SISTAFE is the unique computer based system that supports in an integrated way the financial management of the State that in operational terms, it presents characteristics that makes it an innovative tool:
• Clarity – all records are made by agents from the transactions, in a simple language of the budget, financial and patrimonial;
• Reliability – all accounting records are standardized for each act or fact of management; integrated - as they cover the budgetary, financial and patrimonial executions of the State; and carried out in real time automatically using the accounting operations;
• Transparency - all records and transitions can be consulted at any time by all users who must have access to the information, for management or control purposes, by prior accreditation and according to the level of access - access to the information of one unit only, of a restricted universe of units or of all the units of the Country;
• Comparability - e-SISTAFE maintains information on all financial management records, and all of these records were made according to the same pre-determined standards, basically set out in the SISTAFE Law on Creation and the Information can be compared over time;
• Treasury Unit – the financial resources of the State are concentrated in a single bank account, CUT, maintained and administered by the Bank of Mozambique (BM), through which revenue collection and collection and the payment of expenses, whatever their origin, are handled;
• Identification of the responsible parties – all registrations in the e-SISTAFE are carried out by identifying the agent, the date, the time, the requested transaction and whether it was successful or not, in this case informing the reason;
• Segregation of duties – all acts of financial management are performed in e-SISTAFE by different agents, and the accumulation of functions is prohibited; For example, the person which is responsible for the reserve of appropriations and the request for financial resources is not the same agent responsible for making the payments;
• Intercurrent control – e-SISTAFE provides for a mandatory control mechanism within each unit, called CONFORMITY - procedural and documentary, by a specific agent called Internal Control Agent (ACI), in order to ensure that the records of each Management Act were carried out correctly and in a timely manner.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The e-SISTAFE system was implemented by CEDSIF which stands for Centro de Desenvolvimento de Sistemas de Informação de Finanças what actually means Centre for the Development of the Financial Information System. CEDSIF is an autonomous institution subordinated to the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) mandated to orient and coordinate the State´s Financial Administration Reform programme, designated as SISTAFE. Following services are CEDSIF’s responsibility: implementation and maintenance of the e-SISTAFE, promotion of the change management required for the SISTAFE reform; support to other state organs and institutions in elaborating complementary solutions; provision of training and certification for the e-SISTAFE users.
CEDSIF arises from the merger between UTRAFE and CPD. By order of the Minister of Planning and Finance, in 2002, the State Financial Technical Reform Unit (UTRAFE) was created, responsible for coordinating all the activities of the reform of the State Financial Administration System (SISTAFE), based on Law 9/2002 of 12 February, known as the SISTAFE Law. This Law directs the Public Finance Management System to a new philosophy of integrated budgetary, financial and equity decentralized and encompassing all State Agencies and Institutions, based on the double entry accounting system.
In order to guarantee the full implementation of the activities, CEDSIF currently has 265 employees, of which 3 are international consultants, distributed among the various organizational units. Of the 265 employees, 25 are working in the provincial delegations.
The e-SISTAFE benefits all civil servants and state agents distributed in the different Ministries including subordinate institutions and all other state bodies that receive salaries using this application in a universe of 315.699 employees. In addition, e-SISTAFE benefits more than 1,864 Services Providers to the State which its expenses are paid through the State budget.
The e-SISTAFE is accessed by about 47.000 users distributed by 830 state institutions including 146 districts, generating a daily average of more than 12.000 bank transfers. In the future, it is expected to put this system on the Internet and make it accessible to all users who are registered in the system, regardless of their geographical location.
In addition, by bringing budgetary transparency through e-SISTAFE, the population can monitor the state budget. For instance, the actions to publicize the company's acquisitions of the State through the publication of the manifestation of interest, tenders and contracts are visible in both the press and the portal of Functional Unit for the Supervision of Acquisitions (UFSA).
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The SISTAFE Conceptual Model advocated its implementation in two phases:
Phase 1 – covering the period from 2003 to the end of 2004, prioritizing the Treasury, Budget and Public Accounting (TOC) subsystems with the introduction of the Single Physical Account, financial programming, some improvements In the planning system, the introduction of the Basic Accounting Plan and the introduction into the system of some executing units, vertically and horizontally, of a Ministry (in the case of Education);
Phase 2 – with the objective of improving the development of the previous subsystems and introducing new subsystem such as State Patrimony and Internal Control.
SISTAFE is designed to be implemented in a gradual manner, by processes within each Subsystem, which includes, among other things, the Budget (SOE), Public Accounting (SCP), Public Treasury (STP), State Treasury (SPE) and Of the Internal Control (SCI), and they are operationalized through the e-SISTAFE Modules, of which the MEO, MEX and MGI have already been developed and implemented, and MPE is being developed.
Due to its wide coverage it was systematized and implemented through the introduction of the concept of "management", defined in three areas:
• Started with central and local management, where all the organs and institutions of the State were inserted and the subsystems in the relevant areas of the Treasury, Budget and Accounting (TOC) were implemented, SPE and SCI being in course;
• TOC is being incorporated at the level of local authorities;
• It will later be extended to state enterprises.
In terms of decentralization of State Budget (OE) to the Sectors, the implementation of SISTAFE in central and local management is designed to be executed in 3 sequential phases:
• 1st Phase, covering central and provincial level bodies;
• 2nd Phase, covering autonomous institutions;
• 3rd Phase, for district-level bodies.
Although e-SISTAFE has not yet been fully developed and deployed, its evolution is continuous, including significant software development projects put into production, development of backlog items and deployment of numerous new versions.
In the SISTAFE Monitoring and Evaluation component, it is important to mention that Mozambique recently finalized its 4th national PEFA assessment providing an objective and credible basis for problem analysis and identifying priority areas for support. The 2015 assessment indicated that Mozambique has succeeded in consolidating the major improvements in the PFM system recorded in 2010, while continuing to improve performance – most particularly in the areas of budget execution, accounting, reporting and internal audit. The report highlights that the coverage of the e-SISTAFE system has been substantially extended and the domestic revenue collection as part of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased substantially.
The internal audits are carried out periodically by the General Finance Inspection organ – “Inspecção Geral das Financas” (IGF), with emphasis on the one that took place for a period of 5 months, from 12/12/2014, in order to verify the Degree of compliance of e-SISTAFE applications and technological infrastructure. IGF is an autonomous entity subordinated to the MEF, responsible for internal audit of all state institutions, including public authorities and local authorities, and has its own budget.
The e-SISTAFE's stakeholders were evaluated with the objective of assessing their satisfaction with the work processes, transparency and improvement of all services provided to users and customers through the e-SISTAFE platform.
In order to guarantee the quality of e-SISTAFE applications, CEDSIF controls the processes of the whole software development chain, which involves the measurement of results in relation to the standards established from the requirements survey to the implementation of the Informatics Application in production.
e-SISTAFE is produced by national collaborators and counts on the support of international consultants (business analysts and application architects) and has received recognition from the Ministry of Industry and Trade through the Made in Mozambique Seal.
In addition to the state budget, the development of e-SISTAFE has relied heavily on the financing of international partners where the first four phases of funding were in 2002-2006, 2006-2009, 2010-2012, 2012-2013 that counted With the participation of Belgium, the European Community, Denmark, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and Sweden, the fourth phase (2012-2013) and 2013-2017 mainly financed by the European Union.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The development of e-SISTAFE involved a number of stakeholders who directly and independently contributed to the successful design, development and implementation of the system.
The direct beneficiaries are all public or private entities that directly or indirectly are related to the financial administration of the Mozambican State; The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) has the leading role for coordinating and implementing the PFM reforms. The National Directorates of the MEF (Treasury, Budget and Accounting), as Supervisory Units of the Subsystems of the State Financial Administration System (SISTAFE), the Provincial Directorates of Economy and Finance (DPEF) as Intermediate Units of the SISTAFE Subsystems, Bank of Mozambique (BM) as host of the Single Treasury Account (CUT) and as the entity that transfer the money from public expenditures to the Commercial Banks and, International Cooperation Partners (CIPs), essentially those that finance the PFM area.
The National Directorates of the MEF were directly involved in the design of e-SISTAFE. With the support of International Consultants with Modeling Profiles, Programmers, Test Engineers, contributed to the formulation of the design and initial architecture of the system.
Civil servants and state agents, service providers are beneficiaries of this system because wages and expenses are processed by e-SISTAFE. In the group of Service providers we have the company Mozambique Telecommunication - "Telecomunicações de Moçambique (TDM)", a company that guarantees the operation of the network for the operation of e-SISTAFE in the various sites.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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e-SISTAFE has made a decisive contribution to the modernization of public finances in Mozambique, since it allows full and integrated administration and budget execution of the State and with timely and automatic accounting records generating timely and reliable information and obtaining information Useful and timely. Moreover, with the help of e-SISTAFE it is possible to more easily identify possible frauds that occur during the administration and execution of the budget, a situation that was not previously possible.
The first result is the mechanism that the budget execution is done. At present, implementation is faster at Sector level, increasing the predictability of funds available and improving the production of fiscal information; Acquisitions based on procurement standards and modern and formally established; Substantial increase in expenses incurred directly, with payment to the supplier / beneficiary through direct credit in their bank account, without intermediaries; Increased transparency in the management and use of public funds; And greater reliability, ease and speed in the preparation of accountability processes.
The second result is related with the implementation of the Single Treasury Account (CUT), where the liquidity control was improved, resulting in greater availability of resources for the Public Treasury. Through the CUT, the State substantially reduced the issuance of Treasury Bills and ended with the immobilization of financial resources for payment to suppliers / beneficiaries.
The third result was the level of municipalities with a substantial increase in the quality of collection, administration and application of resources, as a result of better training of their technicians and better structuring and coordination of the activities carried out by each Functional Unit.
The fourth result was the level of development of the districts, from the availability of resources, expansion of the electricity and telecommunications network, promotion of local commerce and expansion of the banking network, as well as the participation of communities in the prioritization of the use of allocated funds. It should be noted that, of the 155 districts in the country, 146 already have access to the e-SISTAFE system. Of the remainder, we are waiting for the creation of energy conditions and banking network which is prerequisite to gain access to the e-SISTAFE.
Finally, the fifth and final result was the control of the payment of salaries to civil servants, state agents and pensioners from their census. With this act it was possible to obtain substantially an increase in the percentage of salaries paid directly (direct credit in the beneficiary's banking households); and greater transparency regarding information on remuneration rights and obligations.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The need to ensure a rapid implementation of Public Finance Management required changes that, however, were not accompanied by the full sense of urgency on the part of those involved in the process. There was a need for training and awareness-raising to promote attitudes, ethics and values consistent with ongoing reforms, focusing on the urgency of change as well as the implications of its slow implementation. As an example of these actions, with financial support of the EU, the MEF created in 2015 two auscultation forums, coordinated by CEDSIF, namely the e-SISTAFE User Forum (FUe) covering all state institutions operating in e-SISTAFE and the National Meeting of SISTAFE, directed by the Minister (MEF) covering all Central and Provincial State organs and institutions, the Supreme audit institution (SAI) – designated as Tribunal Administrative (TA), civil society and partners.
The challenges of any technological project are common and revolve around the corrective and evolutionary maintenance of the implemented products. These challenges are particularly complex in the context of e-SISTAFE as it aggregates several modules, in use by a growing number of users and far from being a static system, maintain a high flow of changes and business improvements required by its customers.
The implementation of e-SISTAFE depends, to a large extent, on resources from international donors and the state budget. The shortage of resources has directly impacted CEDSIF's ability to respond to business needs and relegated to the second plan the technological upgrading actions required to maintain the modern system.
Twelve years after the implementation of e-SISTAFE, deficient staff familiarization with IT systems and a lack of basic infrastructure are considered the main difficulties in implementing the initiative in the entire country. In order to ensure a better use of e-SISTAFE, initial and recycling training activities are carried out, where there are already about 18.000 trained technicians from different national bodies and institutions.
To cope with the lack of basic infrastructures, CEDSIF annually prepares a plan for the expansion of new institutions to adhere to the e-SISTAFE point. The plan is made according to the decentralization needs of SISTAFE and the Provincial Directorates. These institutions are provided with free access equipment (1 Router, 1 Switch, 1 Network Printer and 3 complete computers). The expansion of e-SISTAFE is a dynamic process that is constantly adapted to ensure greater integration and balance in the whole process of State Financial Administration.
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