GIFMIS IMPLEMENTATION: THE JOURNEY SO FAR.
To measure the journey so far, we need to be able to tell how long the journey is expected to be, or what is our destination or using the project management parlance; what does done look like? To this, we can say that our destination will be identified and defined by two features. One, our destination will be reached when all ministries, departments and agencies of the federal government are connected to a reliable, secure and efficient GIFMIS; and two, when all the financial management processes will be automated and undertaken through GIFMIS. By all processes I mean budget preparation, budget warranting, cash management, receivables and revenue management, procurement and contract management, payables and payment processing, stores management, fixed assets management accounting and reporting are undertaken on the system.
Looking back, the journey can be traced back to 2003 when the federal government decided to embark on far reaching reforms that GIFMIS is meant to enable. It has involved a lot of work and a number of milestones have been reached including the following:
a)29th November 2004, GIFMIS General procurement Notice published in international media.
b)GIFMIS Steering Committee inaugurated by the GIFMIS sponsor, the Honourable Minister of Finance.
c)22nd July 2009 GIFMIS 1st stage Specific procurement notice and Bid Document issued to the Public.
d)26th February 2010, 4 out of 18 firms that responded to the first stage bid document invited for second stage bidding.
e)13th May 2010, second stage bids received from 4 shortlisted firms.
f)10th May 2011, a turnkey implementation contract signed with M/s Hewlett-Packard Nigeria Limited, for USD 29,464,744.41.
g)24th May 2011, HP Nigeria with partners MicroAccess and Webmedia AS (now Nortal AS) report to site to commence implementation.
h)20th September 2011, GIFMIS Budget Execution Subsystem Blue print approved by AGF
i)8th December 2011 GIFMIS Budget preparation Subsystem Blue print approved by DG BOF
j)25th January 2012, GIFMIS Accounting and Reporting Subsystem Blue print approved by the AGF.
k)2nd April 2012, GIFMIS Budget Execution Subsystem went live. ( 1st Cash plan issued by OAGF followed shortly after with Warrants issued by BOF and payments by MDAs led by State House, Office of the Head of service of the Federation, and then atleat 93 MDAs in Abuja).
It might be interesting to note that since Golive, a number of milestones have been achieved and are best reflected in the numbers below:
Tracking Indicator | 2nd April 2012 | 30th June 2013 |
Number of MDAS | 93 | 209 |
Number of Users on the System | 30 | 1932 |
Cash plans, Warrants and Releases and Reporting as % of Budget. | 0 | 100% |
TSA MDA Budgets as % of Total Budget. | 48% | 58.8 |
Number of Payment orders Concluded | 0 | 4,701,055 |
Value of Payment Orders Concluded | 0 | ₦4trillion |
Monthly Average Cash Balances | -₦106.60bn | ₦19bn |
Ways and means Financing costs | ₦12.8bn | 0 |
Cash backing time (TSA) | 28 days | 0 days |
Lastly, while there is no doubt that the GIFMIS implementation journey will be a long and hard one, a lot has been achieved so far. It is important to appreciate all those that have made it possible more especially the Steering Committee, the Accountant General of the Federation, the Director General Budget Office of the federation, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Implementation work groups, vendor, the Dedicated Team and the GIFMIS support team whose contribution has been invaluable.
In this column, we will be detailing the journey from different perspectives, business process improvements, efficiency, transparency, training and skills transfer. Stay tuned.