MTBF -- Financial Management Application

FMA or Financial Management Application is an Oracle based software application developed as part of the MTBF project. Its main aim is to improve the quality of budget preparation, strengthen budget execution and enhance financial management capacity at line ministries.

It serves as a useful tool for providing a framework for financial management and operations of the Ministry and its administrative units. The application fully caters to the needs of both Current and Development budget DDOs (Drawings and Disbursement officers).

The budgeting module enables the DDOs/BPOs (Budget Preparing Officers) in preparing and submitting their medium term budget submissions online i.e. via the internet.

Once a DDO logs in, the application will lead the user through a series of user friendly screens to plan, prepare and submit their budget estimates. The budget submitted by all the DDO’s will be stored centrally in an Oracle Database.

The DDO will simply select the applicable health policies from an already available list. This will ultimately facilitate in consolidated reporting.

For the development budgets, the BPOs will define the major activities that they will undertake during the next 3 years

The BPOs will be entering the key outputs or targets that they plan to achieve during the next three years

The system has the provision of quantitative analytics where required, especially in the case of Assets procurement

After submission of 3 year MTBF estimates in the first year, the budget data will be stored in the database. In the next year, when the BPO logs in again to submit estimates for the next 3 years, the data for the following two years will automatically be made available by the system; thereby he will only have to plan for the last year of MTBF. The BPO will have the option to make amendments to the two years data automatically made available by the system. This will be applicable to, Policies, outputs, activities as well as actual object codes against which the budget would be entered.

The system is fully NAM (New Accounting Model) compliant. The system follows the object classification hierarchy as defined in NAM. The user will select the appropriate code by following the same hierarchy i.e. Major Code, Minor Code, Block Code (Optional) and finally the detail code.

When actually entering numeric estimates, the system will guide the user to select the appropriate code. Submitting budget estimates in a wrong object is a very common error, which the system will overcome automatically. Furthermore a quick object code search facility will enable the user to quickly search for the appropriate code. From the list of search results, he/she will select the appropriate one.

Furthermore since all the totals will be automatically done by the system, therefore the totals that will be computed will also be accurate.

Preparation and Submission of BO/NIS in itself is quite a major issue. The rules for generating BO/NIS will be built into the system and the system will automatically prepare it without any user intervention.

The system itself will be very easy to use. Even then if the user faces any problem, he can quickly view the online quick start training videos available for each screen, or before budget preparation he can practice using the application through online interactive tutorials. The online videos will be in English as well as the native language of the user.

Following are some of the Live screen shots of the budgeting module.[BACK TO TOP]

FMA module automates the financial / accounting procedures at a DDO site by fully computerizing all of their processes from billing till cheque issuance. Since the whole Federal government follows a standardized expenditure procedure, therefore the system is designed such that it is customizable for any DDO site.

Before developing the FMA module, an in-depth study was conducted of the (i) workflow, (ii) functional and data analysis of the budget (iii) financial management procedures carried out at the main Ministry of Health and DDO sites. The heads of the spending units were actively involved at each and every step of the development process. Continuous feedback was sought and improvements were made.

When the bills are received in the accounts department, they are entered in the system. [Click here to download bill entry video (Size: 1140 KB)]. The system automatically assigns a unique number to each bill and stores them in its database. If more than 1 bill of a supplier / employee is to be entered, the user can make use of the “Swift Data Entry” facility to save time.

When a bill is to be sent to AGPR, [Click here to download voucher preparation video (Size: 962 KB)] the system intelligently generates and automatically prints the required vouchers thereby eliminating any chances of errors which otherwise were likely to occur during the preparation of manual vouchers. Upon sending the bills to AGPR the system provisionally updates the balances.

The tokens and cheques received against the vouchers are entered through user friendly screens. The systems quick search facility enables the user to quickly search the appropriate record and enter token or clear vouchers by entering cheque numbers and amounts.

Further more the system also facilitates in the creation and maintenance of a proper good quality fixed assets register.

The system automatically maintains accurate balances without any user intervention. At any point in time, the current balance can be found out with a simply click of a button. System generates reports that meet the needs of all levels.

At regular intervals the data can be transferred from DDO to the Section Officer (Current) and Section Officer (Development). The replicated data will be consolidated at Section Officer level and analyzed for financial management reporting. This important feature will assist the Ministry staff sitting at the Head Quarters to monitor the financial position at the DDO level.

A funds release tracking system is also being developed to handle the release tracking mechanism using the Cash Plan mechanism introduced by the Planning & Development Division.

After the development of the system in January 2005 the system was thoroughly tested for 3 weeks during February 2005 at PIMS.

The testing was conducted in an iterative manner in which continuous feedback was sought from the concerned staff and management and improvements were made accordingly.

The Financial Management module of FMA stands ready for deployment and implementation.

FMA has been approved for implementation in Ministry of Health by the secretary (MoH) on 12^th March 2005.

Funding is being sought from donors, FMA will be implemented at the key DDO sites in Islamabad after the funding has been received.

Following is the list of the key DDO sites at Islamabad where the system is planned to be implemented:

Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS)
Maternal and Child Healthcare Centre (MCH)
Federal Government Services Hospital (FGSH)
Ministry of Health, Main Headqarters - Islamabad

[Click here to download the presentation containing the summary of the testing conducted at PIMS]

NOTES REGARDING PRESENTATION

(1) After the download completes and you open up the presentation it will prompt you for a password. Simply click on the "READ ONLY" button.
(2) If you do not have Microsoft PowerPoint, CLICK HERE to download the Microsoft PowerPoint viewer directly from Microsoft's web site
(3) The presentation contains a brief about the manner in which the testing was conducted at PIMS. Sample screen shots of FMA and Sample screen shots of AGPR vouchers

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FURTHER INFORMATION AND INQUIRIES

If you need further information about FMA, budgeting module or any specific functionality of the system, you can get that from:

Mr Mohammad Abubakr
IT Analyst
Room # 107,
Block Q, Pak Sectt, Islamabad
Telephone (051) 9202661 / 9209422

Contact by phone Timings: (Pakistan Standard Time, +5 GMT)

0900 hours - 1630 hours (Mon - Fri)
0900 hours - 1230 hours (Sat)
Lunch Break: 1300 - 1400 Hrs