No. 37

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Ten Years of Centralisation of State Agencies’ Support Services – an Example of an Extreme Reform

04 June 2018

Studies

RiTo No. 37, 2018

In the opinion of the National Audit Office, the centralisation of support services of state agencies has generally been successful, the quality of accounting has improved, and accounting has become more effective.

Therefore it would be beneficial to analyse the implementation of a similar model in local governments, i.e. to concentrate the accounting services to central units. It would allow to save working time on performing routine accounting procedures and to use this time for financial management, which helps to use public funds better and more expediently.

On 28 May 2015, the government decided to transfer the financial, personnel and wage accounting of all ministries and authorities in their area of government of the State Shared Service Centre.

A decision was also made to start concentrating the organisation of public procurements to the State Shared Service Centre, the objective of which is a better quality and economic savings in carrying out public procurements as well as of the items and services to be purchased.

The audit of the National Audit Office shows that the quality of financial, personnel and wage accounting in state agencies has improved as a result of introducing common accounting standards, implementing common business software and concentrating accounting to the support services units of ministries and subsequently to the State Shared Service Centre.

Transition to common information systems was the main lever that enabled making financial, personnel and wage accounting more effective.

The specialisation that took place during centralisation, where consolidation of similar sections of work has enabled to organise the work more effectively and reduce the number of employees, has also increased effectiveness.

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