The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) of the Philippines has recently launched its implementation of a secure and reliable modern financial management information system.
According to the recent press release, the project aims to achieve better transparency, accountability, and efficiency among national government agencies.
The new Budget and Treasury Management System (BTMS) was made possible because of the Department’s partnership with a telecommunications company and a software solutions company for public financial management.
The new system is an integrated and fully-automated platform for a sustainable Government Resource Planning (GRP) solution.
Moreover, the system is extensible, flexible and adaptable to reforms as well as suits a wide range of public financial requirements.
Both the DBM and the Bureau of the Treasury piloted the system since both are oversight and spending agencies.
The Commission on Audit (COA), meanwhile, will have special access to support auditing functions.
The system will be rolled out to all national government agencies within the next year.
The Department of Budget and Management Secretary Benjamin Diokno said that with the implementation of the new system, the way things are being done would be revolutionised.
Also, this will further improve their ability to deliver public service.
The effective use of modern technology will strengthen their fiscal responsibility as it would allow them to keep an eye on the government financial status in real time.
An improved and harmonised government financial process will provide more reliable and timely financial information leading to sound policy decision-making for executives, managers and staff in line and oversight agencies.
The telecommunications company is committed to helping the Philippines become a digital nation and is glad to be a part of the government’s journey towards digital transformation.
For the project, the telecommunication company provided the infrastructure while the software company developed the software based on globally-accepted solutions.
However, it was configured and customised for the Philippine government.
The software company encouraged the government to capitalise on the system as it will help the government guarantee accountability and a more responsive and transparent public expenditure management system.
Moreover, the system supports DBM in the maintenance and complete trail of budget appropriations and balances for each national agency.
In addition, the system supports high-level aggregation of processes relating to the collection, handling, and usage of cash resources undertaken by the Bureau of the Treasury.
The government has been dealing with processing financial transactions manually for years. The fiscal agencies, meanwhile, utilise numerous stand-alone systems to generate financial information.
Because of this, lack of budget credibility, lack of funding predictability, weak cash management system, and absence of a common budgetary and accounting classification occurred according to the 2016 Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Assessment.
The World Bank, on the one hand, noted that the country’s public financial management would be more efficient with the existence of an integrated financial management system that will provide a more accurate view of the government’s financial performance and management of public funds.
