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MINISTRY OF FINANCE AND NATIONAL PLANNING |
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Intergrated Financial Managemant Systems (IFMIS).
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IFMIS FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
3. What is the focus of the IFMIS?
4. How long will it take to implement IFMIS?
5. How is the IFMIS Implementation Managed?
6. Who are the IFMIS Implementation champions?
7. Who is contracted to implement the System?
10. What are the IFMIS Implementation Sites?
11. Who will meet the cost for the supply, installation and implementation of the IFMIS?
12. What are the challenges and risks associated with IFMIS?
14. What is the maintenance plan for the IFMIS?
15. Will all officers have computer terminals in order to access the system?
21. What is the status of the Legislation supporting the Reforms?
24. Will there be insurance cover for the equipment that would be invested in IFMIS?
25. What is the total cost of the IFMIS project?
27. How will we ensure information is kept secure?
28. At what intervals would the Audits be conducted with the IFMIS system?
29. What will the IFMIS do with the stand alone systems currently in place?
31. What should the Users expect from the IFMIS in terms of investigative Audits?
32. How will the IFMIS take care of information of security nature?
35. What would be the impact of the Decentralization policy on the budgeting system?
36. What would happen in the event the system collapses?
38. There are no clear policies on asset management in Government. How will the IFMIS assist?
39. The DMFAS database only dealt with external debt. Will the IFMIS cater for domestic debt?
43. Will IFMIS assist Government identify and capture all sources of revenue in MPSAs?
45. Many people involved in the implementation are consultants. What happens when they go away?
46. What would change in terms of jobs for the Users with the coming of IFMIS?
48. How will the Super Users of IFMIS be identified?
49. What would be the role of CCSD in the IFMIS set up?
51. What is going to happen with the current systems once IFMIS is implemented?
52. Is IFMIS a component of PMEC and when PMEC would be rolled out?
53. How is the Ministry of Finance and National Planning staff going to be involved in IFMIS?
1.What is IFMIS?
IFMIS stands for Integrated Financial Management Information System. IFMIS is a strategic transformation that involves substantial changes to the manner in which the Government of Republic of Zambia (GRZ) manages public financial resources. The transformation will involve the implementation of an IT tool and the re-engineering of some of the current business processes.
IFMIS will increase GRZ ability to monitor its expenditure, to easily access financial information and in real time, improve internal control and avoid fraud; support accrual accounting and at the same time, have a better view of the Government cash position.
2. How was IFMIS formulated?
IFMIS project was initiated by Government and Cooperating partners to address the PMF weakness.
The IFMIS was formulated and designed through the Fiscal Management Systems Study which was carried out by KPMG in the year 2001. The study was commissioned to identify and document business processes, modules, information needs as well as technological solutions that can best meet the financial management practices throughout Ministries, Provinces, Spending Agencies and Local Government.
3. What is the focus of the IFMIS?
The IFMIS will focus on prudent financial Management of public resources by Government through the automation of budgeting and accounting Systems.
4. How long will it take to implement IFMIS?
IFMIS will be implemented in a phased manner. The first phase is the pilot implementation (8 pilot sites) which is estimated to take 17 months. The second phase is the rollout where the tested system will be deployed progressively to all Ministries, Provinces and Spending Agencies (MPSAs) and will take 19 months.
The third phase (Interface) will implement an interface between the newly implemented system and the Local Authorities and Parastatals. This phase will take 8 months and will be carried out concurrently with the rollout phase.
5. How is the IFMIS Implementation Managed?
The IFMIS implementation is managed through Governance structures comprising a Technical Committee, Project Board (chaired by the Permanent Secretary (FMA)), a Project Management Team and the implementation Workgroups.
The Technical Committee reports to PEMFA management team chaired by the Secretary to Treasury. The PEMFA management team reports to PSRP Steering Committee chaired by the Secretary to Cabinet.
6. Who are the IFMIS Implementation champions?
The IFMIS implementation champions are the Secretary to Treasury and the Permanent Secretary (FMA), Ministry of Finance and National Planning.
7. Who is contracted to implement the System?
SOLUZIONA Consultoria y Tecnologia, a leading Spanish consultancy company, is the one contracted to implement IFMIS in close collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and National Planning (MOFNP). This company has more than 15 years experience in implementing similar successful projects in Africa
The contract was signed in November 2006 and the team mobilized in January 2007.
8. What assurances exist to ensure that IFMIS would reach the lower levels eg. District Councils considering past experiences which had shown that most projects in Zambia started from the Centre with intentions of reaching the lower levels but never got to the lower levels eg .the PSCAP project
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IFMIS Project Manager-Eng. Pedro Sanchez-Barrio
(SOLUZIONA) |
IFMIS will initially go up to Provincial level. A provision has been made to eventually bring on board the District Councils, once the implementation of the Decentralization Policy to the districts is finalized. The districts are also included in the interface phase of IFMIS implementation.
 IFMIS - Accounting Workshop Meeting- Mulungushi |
9. How are IFMIS users expected to support the Project Team who are responsible for implementation of the system?
The users of IFMIS will be expected to support the Project Team by providing the following services:
(a) At the pilot sites, the Project Team will focus on the server rooms, power and communication infrastructure etc. At each of these sites, it is important that the users grant the contractor access and assist them in carrying out the installations as specified.
(b) The Project Team will also be involved in further review of the business processes to carry out the requirements validation. They will, therefore, engage the Users in extensive discussions and to this end require maximum co-operation from all stakeholders and in particular, the users.
The users are expected to accord them such support as to enabled them understand the implementation issues.
10. What are the IFMIS Implementation Sites?
The IFMIS implementation sites comprise Government Ministries, Provinces and Spending Agencies (MPSAS) in all current accounting units. They will also include interfaces with the Bank of Zambia, Payroll, Commercial Banks, Zambia Revenue Authority, Local Authorities, etc.
The pilot sites are the following:
ü Ministry of Finance and National Planning
ü Ministry of Education
ü Ministry of Works and Supply
ü Ministry of Foreign Affairs
ü Ministry of Communication and Transport
ü Auditor General’s Office
ü North-Western Province
ü Eastern Province.
11. Who will meet the cost for the supply, installation and implementation of the IFMIS?The cost of the acquisition and installation of hardware (computers, printers, UPS), software (IFMIS Application), Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) and site preparation will be met by the Ministry of Finance and National Planning through funding from Public Expenditure Management and Financial Accountability (PEMFA) programme financed by a consortium of Cooperating partners. |
 IFMIS Project Offices at the new Govt. Complex-Kamwala |
12. What are the challenges and risks associated with IFMIS?
Some of challenges and risks associated with the implementation of IFMIS are:
- Ensure GRZ ownership to lead the project
- User commitment
- High IFMIS and GRZ staff turnover
- Political will
- Sustainability
13. The IFMIS will require qualified Accounting Staff to operate it. What is Government doing to solve the problem of lack of accounting staff in most Government establishments?
The number of qualified staff in GRZ is quite high and initiatives are also being undertaken to recruit more accounting staff. However, all IFMIS staff at all levels will be adequately trained to operate the system.
14. What is the maintenance plan for the IFMIS?
All hardware, software and network equipment carry a manufacturer’s warranty. In the case of the IFMIS, we shall have three years service level agreement (SLA) and a post warranty period of two years for the main server Equipment.
15. Will all officers have computer terminals in order to access the system?
All users working on the following core modules will have access to the system: General Ledger, Payments and Commitment Control systems, purchasing, Budgeting, Cash Management, Revenue/Receipting systems, Cash management, Fixed Asset, Fleet Manager, Stores Manager, Project Accounting, debt Management, Audit and consolidation.
Accordingly, initially, the number of users will also be limited to the very minimum to ensure success and to provide government with implementation lessons on the above modules. However, as soon as the basics are achieved, there will be effort to increase on the number of users who could access other information communication services such as e-mail.
16. Would the systems at UNDP and other Donor Agencies used for project accounting be linked to IFMIS.
No. These are outside GRZ control unless such funds are channeled to GRZ accounts.
17. What will happen to those Ministries, Provinces, Agencies and Local Authorities, that already have computerized systems? And
 IFMIS Induction Training |
what will happen to the manual and electronic records that exist.
Government of Zambia is aware of the existence of other systems such as the Activity Based Budgeting (ABB), Finance Management System (FMS), Debt Management Finance Systems (DEMFAS) etc. Some of this systems will be replaced by IFMIS and others will be interfaced with IFMIS. Arrangements will be made to migrate both manual and electronic data onto the new IFMIS. Careful measures will be taken to ensure that data loss (potential money loss) is minimized.
18. What arrangements are being put in place to avoid Central ownership of the IFMIS system, like was the case with the FMS system, which was owned by CCSD hence creating problems for the Users who had to rely on CCSD for support?
IFMIS will be owned by users who will be trained to operate the System on a self service basis from their desktops. The Users will also be assisted by System Administrators at each MPSA who will provide administrative and technical support.
An IFMIS help desk will be created that will centralized the reception of all users support needs. CCSD will be restructured in order to ensure its alignment with IFMIS requirements and the capability of being able to provide an efficient and effective service to the end users.
Acting Accountant General Mr.M.Goma and |
19. What guarantees existed to assure the stakeholders that IFMIS would not fail like other projects which were not performing to expectations.In order to guarantee IFMIS success, users should be fully involved from the beginning by ensuring their full participation and support. GRZ staff should not see IFMIS as an external project. Instead they should see it as a project of GRZ for GRZ. The IFMIS team includes highly qualified Government staff who are also users and very familiar with GRZ current processes. These will provide guidance on the re-engineering of the TO BE processes, in order to ensure that all GRZ requirements are met. |
20. How should Government Agencies handle offers of support for investment in Computerization of Budgeting and Accounting systems?
All investments in computerization of Budgeting and Accounting systems are to be cleared with the Permanent Secretary (FMA)/Secretary to the Treasury, through the IFMIS Project, at the Ministry of Finance and National Planning.
21. What is the status of the Legislation supporting the Reforms?
Review of legislation will be made after the pilot implementation.
22. Does Government have the capacity to generate the huge amounts of both financial and physical resources which would be required to be able to support and maintain the IFMIS system without Donor Assistance?
Once IFMIS is implemented, the different Ministries will have to include in their budget the IFMIS maintenance costs so as to ensure system sustainability.
23. How will IFMIS project assist in ensuring that the good reports produced from the system are effectively utilized?
The effective use of the reports produced from the system will depend on actions and decisions made by policy makers, recipients and Users of such reports. These are human actions which can not be controlled by the system.
24. Will there be insurance cover for the equipment that would be invested in IFMIS?
Yes, there is an insurance cover for all the equipment.
25. What is the total cost of the IFMIS project?
The cost of supply, installation and implementation of IFMIS is about US$24 Million.
26. Why have the Donors decided to put so much resource into IFMIS and not into other priority areas like education?
IFMIS will create significant financial savings which ultimately can be channeled to social sectors like education and poverty reduction programmes.
27. How will we ensure information is kept secure?
The application software will provide for password access at different levels for security purposes. In addition, the internal and external audit functions will be trained to audit in a computerized environment to ensure adequate preventive, detective and corrective controls are in place to ensure the security of the system. Further, transmitted data/information will be encrypted and highly secure transport protocols will be used.
Network Security bundles will be deployed and Firewalls configured to prevent any would be hackles.
To prevent total data lose, Backup policies that will cover a total data processing cycle will be put in place to take care of Data corruption that could be accidental or otherwise.
A Disaster recovery site will also be put in place to ensure that Disastrous events that interfere with normal Operations a taken care of.
All these are among other efforts that will be applied to ensure that the IFMIS data is Save
28. At what intervals would the Audits be conducted with the IFMIS system?
At any point as determined in the audit schedule by Auditors.
29. What will the IFMIS do with the stand alone systems currently in place?
IFMIS will replace some legacy systems such
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IFMIS ICT Team |
30. Will the IFMIS system have deliberate policies to cater for physical damage or crime on the system?
Damage due to negligence or indeed crime will be dealt with in accordance with the disciplinary code.
31. What should the Users expect from the IFMIS in terms of investigative Audits?
The audit module in the IFMIS will enable authorized users to delve into all modules to view transactions, who created them, when, and who authorized.
32. How will the IFMIS take care of information of security nature?
Access to all information will be restricted to authorized users only. Only information cleared by GRZ will be placed on the website.
33. How is ICT policy produced by the Ministry of Communications and Transport related to the IFMIS ICT policy?
The ICT Policy produced by the Ministry of Communications and Transport is broader is a National ICT Policy and is broader and high level. The IFMIS ICT Policy is more specific but within the broad national guidelines.
34. How does IFMIS propose to solve the problem of lack of positive action by the Ministry of Finance and National Planning, in providing funding to support budgets even after mid year reviews?
IFMIS will create information availability which will help responsible officers and Users make quality decisions even about funding.
35. What would be the impact of the Decentralization policy on the budgeting system?
The budgeting system will be aligned to the fiscal decentralization where resources will be distributed to the lowest level of expenditure and that is at the District level.
This implies that the budgeting process will be done at the district level unlike the situation where the budget is done at the central level.
36. What would happen in the event the system collapses?
For all systems of this nature, there are contingency plans. At the level of the software, there will be real-time back-ups maintained. At another level, GRZ has plans to set up a Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) facility located away from the Data Center. The IFMIS disaster recovery site will take over all operations in the event of a disaster at the primary site.
37. What will Government do to ensure that the provision of power by ZESCO and the problems with the ZAMTEL system do not affect the efficiency of the IFMIS?
IFMIS will have back-up generators and powerful uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS’s) to facilitate processing and saving of data in the event of a power failure. IFMIS will use VSAT and radio technology in addition or backup to the ZAMTEL infrastructure.
38. There are no clear policies on asset management in Government. How will the IFMIS assist?
GRZ will have to adopt accounting policies related to asset management.
39. The DMFAS database only dealt with external debt. Will the IFMIS cater for domestic debt?
The upgraded version of the DMFAS will also cater for domestic debt. However, IFMIS has also included a module in its tender to cater for domestic debt.
40. The concept of creating an accrual system may create grounds for frauds. How does IFMIS propose to safeguard the system against such tendencies?
An accrual system in itself cannot be a ground for fraud. However, a real-time-on-line system provides a lot of challenges, hence the strict enforcement of password and user ID controls to identify who did what and when on the system. Further, the stringent levels of approvals will provide additional checks.
41. How meaningful would the accounts produced through the IFMIS be once integration with other institutions is in place since these institutions had different accounting policies and systems?
GRZ will provide standard formats for use in consolidation. This will ensure that the reports are standardized.
42. How feasible is it to migrate data from manual to electronic more especially data concerning loans and advances?
All manual data to be migrated to the new system will need to be captured electronically, in excel, access or a data campaign database. A data clean up exercise will take place before data migration to the new system.
43. Will IFMIS assist Government identify and capture all sources of revenue in MPSAs?
IFMIS will assist to capture all the revenues defined in the Chart of Accounts, for the ones not defined is up to GRZ to identify them for future capturing in IFMIS.
44. What will happen to Officers who do not know how to use the system during implementation? Will they remain idle?
| Every officer affected by IFMIS implementation will be trained before the system is implemented. Arrangements will be made to provide basic appreciation skills to all Officers who are not familiar with computers. |
.JPG) IFMIS-Financials Team |
45. Many people involved in the implementation are consultants. What happens when they go away?
In order to
ensure the sustainability of the system by GRZ, IFMIS project
implementation strategy ensures that during the development of the same
there is sufficient knowledge transfer and capacity building. This is
being carried out through:
ü GRZ attached staff, who are working in IFMIS in join teams
ü Workgroups, composed by GRZ Top and Middle management, and who are
highly involved on the key activities of the project.
ü Training of Users
46. What would change in terms of jobs for the Users with the coming of IFMIS?
The processes might need re-engineering and the reports will be auto generated. Users will create reports from their desktops and generally information will be available anytime on their desktops rather than from the computer room. Most work will be automated. Jobs may have to be re-defined in the light of the changed environment.
47. What will happen to those officers without the requisite skills and knowledge? Will they lose jobs?
The basic computing skills required are word processing, excel, E-mail etc. Arrangements are already underway to provide skills to those officers who need them. Later, officers will be trained on the IFMIS system before the go live. No job losses are anticipated except in cases where staff becomes excess and officers cannot be re-trained
48. How will the Super Users of IFMIS be identified?
Super users will be selected taking into consideration their current level of understanding of GRZ processes and their level of influence in the change process.
49. What would be the role of CCSD in the IFMIS set up?
CCSD will need to undertake control of government Information Communication Technology (ICT) environment with the implementation of IFMIS. During the implementation of IFMIS, CCSD will second some of their staff to the project. These will be expected to report to the project as part of capacity building.
50. What measures has Government put in place to retain and adequately remunerate technical Information technology (IT) staff required to support and maintain the IFMIS.
Plans are underway to review the mandate and structure of CCSD and accordingly the remuneration structures will be reviewed to ensure that technical staff is remunerated according to their technical qualifications, experience and levels of responsibility.
51. What is going to happen with the current systems once IFMIS is implemented?
Some of the current systems will slowly be phased out with the implementation of the SAP (if their current functionalities are covered by the New System) while others will remain and will be interfaced with the new SAP System. (i.e: payroll system)
52. Is IFMIS a component of PMEC and when PMEC would be rolled out?
IFMIS is not a component of the PMEC project, which was a payroll management information system implementation. Rather, IFMIS covers a wide rage of modules and PMEC will become a component of IFMIS once the interface with payroll is in place.
53. How is the Ministry of Finance and National Planning staff going to be involved in IFMIS?
The Ministry of Finance and National Planning staff as well as key identified staff from other Pilot Sites will be involved by participating and leading the implementation of the IFMIS. So