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Public Financial Management Good Practices

PFM Domain Good Practice Applicable

ANTI-CORRUPTION LEVERAGING GRP TO REDUCE CORRUPTION DEVELOPING NATIONS, EMERGING ECONOMIES

what is the linkage between anticorruption and GRP?

Governments implement Government Resource Planning (GRP) or Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (IFMIS) to improve fiscal management and governance as part of Public Financial Management (PFM) reform GRP systems and PFM reform have been found to improve governance where governance is the door to anticorruption Countries with better-performing PFM systems have lower corruption perception indexes because robust PFM systems raise the risk of detection and the cost for bad behavior The reduction of corruption is the result of a committed desire to change and the use of appropriate tools, like GRP, to affect change There are no systematic assessments of the impact of IFMIS impact on corruption but the literature considers that IFMIS can have a deterrent function on corruption by increasing the risks of detection and the absence of an IFMIS is considered an enabling factor for corruption GRP addresses three principal-agent framework dimensions of institutional structure that are most critical in reducing opportunities for corruption: (1) the monopoly power of officials; (2) degree of discretion that officials are permitted to exercise; and (3) degree to which there are systems of accountability and transparency in an institution The computerization of public financial management processes can create new opportunities for corruption by monopolizing information access and control, so additional institutional and capacity factors are needed to leverage GRP for anti-corruption efforts GRP systems when combined with the proper institutional environment augments anticorruption efforts although not all forms of corruption can be detected by these systems The anticorruption capabilities of GRP systems are augmented when leveraged via e-governance transparency portals and it has been suggested all types of petty bureaucratic corruption can be diminished through the increased transparency achieved by using modern electronic media Governance: the manner in which government acquires and exercises its authority to provide public goods & services Corruption: the use of public office for private gain and is an outcome a consequence of the failure of accountability relationships in the governance system

what is the linkage between governance and anti-corruption?

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what is the consensus on the role of PFM for anticorruption?

The relationship between sound and orderly PFM systems and reduced levels of corruption is also receiving increased attention. Mapping freedom from corruption (using Transparency Internationals (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI)), against the quality of PFM (using the World Banks Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA)), suggests that higher quality PFM systems correlate with lower perceptions of corruption (Dorotinsky and Pradhan 2007). Heilbrunn (2004) argues that the creation of anti-corruption commissions is a token effort that lacks substance, if reforms in PFM do not take place.

GRP has a significant effect on financial institutions and investor corruption and is an enabler for reducing corruption by executives. Based on the World Bank study in 2000 , GRP has a possible positive effect on more than half of attributable corruption in developing countries. what are the corruption effects on public finances? a one-point increase in the corruption index reduces tax revenue collected by 2.7 percent of GDP estimated $400 Billion lost worldwide through procurement corruption because the procurement of goods and services by public bodies amounts on average to between 15 and 25 percent of a countrys Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates of annual worldwide bribery of about US $1 trillion dollars annually

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where are the PFM vulnerabilities to corruption?

There are numerous corruption PFM vulnerabilities throughout the government budget cycle including: Budget Execution: is considered fertile ground for corruption because it provides opportunities to undertake transactions and for money to exchange hands through gaps between formal processes and informal practices Budget Preparation: vulnerability for corruption is considered to be low at the stages of planning and preparation but is important to have full budget coverage Extra-budgetary accounts: or off-budget accounts funneled through foreign aid or other methods Payments: includes authoring officer withholding the issuance of a payment order on account of cash flow shortage while in effect, his real reason is expectation of a bribe and in the form of payments to ghost companies or workers, for the delivery of no goods or services, queue jumping, retention of payment in return for kick backs, transfer of less than the stated amounts and pocketing the balance, and favoritism in approving eligibility Payroll: including ghost employees, dead pensioners and demands by managers for payroll kickbacks Procurement: is a common source of corruption and can include violation of procurement laws and regulations, ordering of unauthorized goods and services, exceeding budget ceilings, bid-riggings, orders addressed to fictitious companies, acceptance of inflated prices Public Investment Projects: as a special case for procurement where some individuals or political groups [gain] opportunities to receive commissions and executives have significant degree of discretion in influencing the scope of these projects Tax Administration: can be a major problem to tax and customs administrations including bribes to reduce or evade tax Treasury: The manipulation of bank accounts outside the control of the Treasury Audit: audit trails in GRP tools identifies who entered, adapted and approved every step in a government process enabling fraud pattern recognition Exceptions: identifies exceptions to normal operations Reporting: GRP reporting tools and analysis by internal and external stakeholders detects fraud Transparency: publishing of budget plans and budget reporting opens up information to civil society scrutiny

how do GRP systems detect corruption?

GRP systems are used to detect corrupt activity through:

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how do GRP systems prevent corruption?

Internal controls within institutions are considered the most effective for GRP anticorruption: Controls: through automation to ensure legal processes are followed and appropriate approvals used to eliminate opportunities for corruption because of the link to the transaction cycle, the circumvention of procedures and blurring of cash disbursements ,and the use of informal practices Decentralization: of functions to impede centralized corruption Payments: eliminate cash payments through secure cheque printing and electronic funds transfer making financial transactions fully traceable and reducing cash fungibility including use of the Treasury Single Account to prevent manipulation Reporting: knowledge that fraud patterns can be uncovered in reporting, or audit, changes the behaviour of politicians and public servants Segregation: of duties for processes across many people reduces the ability of any one person to commit fraud

Countries with low perceived corruption enjoy higher human development

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what forms of corruption are restricted through the use of GRP?

Accrual Accounting: prevents hiding arrears and assets that are possible in cash accounting Asset Management: reduces theft of public goods by cross-reference of asset inventories with equipment purchase Audit and Reporting: reduces theft of public funds through fraud detection and automatic exception alerts Human Resources: reduces nepotism, ghost employees through audits, kickbacks by tracking payments, comparing addresses, using national identification cards, cross-referencing birth and death records, civil service and executive financial disclosure, coherent alignment of salary scales to responsibilities and recruitment controls Procurement: controls aimed to detect and deter corruption and can provide feedback about irregularities from competitors through on-line reporting Revenue: controls show full revenue collected for fees, fines and taxes, the introduction of computerized support for the processing of customs documents provides the opportunity to implement standardized procedures that leave little to the discretion of the officials Tax Administration: reduces tax fraud through land ownership and vendor records and rent-seeking from revenue collectors

what factors in the GRP system are necessary for anticorruption?

can we put corruption in perspective?

Tendering: reduces contract steering fraud by cross referencing employee and vendor information and quotes from fake vendors Comprehensiveness: the GRP system is covering a significant portion of the PFM system otherwise fraud will occur in manual and non-integrated systems and most common standards, rules and procedures, with the view to reducing risks of mismanagement of public resources Integrity: the GRP software and underlying database have maintained data integrity where the technology identifies data manipulation attempts Reconciliation: GRP sub-systems like bank statements, tax administration or payroll need to be frequently reconciled to trap fraud Secure: the GRP system provides good access controls on secure networks to reduce data manipulation Although there has been a strong narrative about corruption in developing countries, it should be noted that under much more propitious conditions, the rampant corruption in the United States that spanned from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century was presided over by the industrial robber barons and Tammany Hall leaders and took decades to overcome and some PFM reforms in these countries have taken up to two centuries to evolve.

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how does transparency and egovernance reduce corruption?

The ability of the public to review the full performance and financial statements of government entities leads to confidence and trust in the public sector and roots out corruption. PFM transparency should be considered a major force to animate civil society engagement and protest by turning on the capacity of the society to interact with data: Bribery: transparency minimizes the opportunities for public officials to monopolize access to relevant information and to extract bribes from clients Comparability: budget transparency enables civil society to compare expenditures across multiple years to identify corruption patterns Freedom of information: along with open data, enables civil society to act as corruption watchdogs, credited with combatting corruption Monitoring: civil society leveraging transparency to identify where and how corruption is actually taking place Independent reporting: through social media enables the public to uncover corruption patterns and augment government auditing Procurement manipulation: competitors and civil society can object to fraudulent tendering, find collusion between vendor and procurement officer, identify patterns of bribery, favouritism, patronage systems and bid rigging Surveys: Public Expenditure Tracking surveys, when made public and linked to public information campaigns, can contribute to reducing leakages

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what additional factors are needed to achieve anticorruption potential for GRP?

what is the linkage between corruption and aid effectiveness?

Autonomous audit: can have a critical role in strengthening government accountability if structural dysfunctions in the system of fiscal control are eliminated Capacity: ICT, PFM, investigative services and legal capacity among public servants and citizen education to leverage transparent government information Civil service reform: create a culture of professionalism and ethical values with instilling meritocracy while providing workers with salaries comparable to the private sector Decentralization: effects on anti-corruption largely depend on the design of the fiscal transfers from the central government Discretion limitation: where politicians have limited discretionary authority Institutional practices: internal audit, external audit, anti-corruption commissions and strong rule of law are needed to make corruption accountable Internet access: internet access is positively associated with reductions in corruption Legislative oversight: by the strengthening of the rights of members of parliament in the budget preparation process Media competition: ensures good quality of information provided to citizens to help reduce public acceptance of corruption Mobile infrastructure: mobile and social media enables rapid organization to create critical mass of protesters and closes the digital divide Political will: clear commitment of authorities and effective political motivations are required to ensure capacity building and relevant institutional practices Revenue de-concentration: separation of functions is a trend in revenue administration to organise activities by function e.g. audit services, collections, rather than by tax type e.g. Value Added Tax (VAT) or Income Tax, in the belief that this increases collections and reduces the potential for corruption Risk management: risk mitigation strategies that results in changing processes Rule of law: legal ramifications and accountability when corruption is detected Tax simplification: reduces discretion in tax collection and reduces exemptions Corruption and lack of transparency, which erode public support, impede effective resource mobilisation and allocation and divert resources away from activities that are vital for poverty reduction and sustainable economic development. Where corruption exists, it inhibits donors from relying on partner country systems. Donors are more likely to fund projects off-budget when there is high perceived corruption. This increases transaction costs for reporting and introduces inefficiencies because of the lack of coordination and harmonization among donors and with governments.

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why should donors use country systems?

Country GRP systems can reduce aid fungibility when the whole of the states revenues should be accounted for in its official budget.
The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the associated emphasis on the use of country systems placed PFM reform in centre stage, both from a poverty reduction and sustainable peace (in post-conflict countries) perspective. For donors, the importance of sound PFM systems in recipient countries also relates to concerns about funds not being used for intended purposes and the associated impact on development effectiveness and their own reputation. When donors avoid using government systems designed to guarantee a degree of integrity, this provides the opportunity for corruption. This has been especially true in countries with a large donor presence There is a lack of evidence to show that corruption lessens when expenditures use a donors PFM system rather than reasonably strong PFM systems of a postconflict country. In fact, there are numerous cases of well-publicised abuses when donors deliver aid directly. There is an international donor commitment to use country systems, including GRP, to improve aid effectiveness.

what are some reallife examples of GRP anti-corruption success stories?

Afghanistan: around seven signatures were needed for every payment in the paper-based system and each signature required a small bribe. This avenue for corruption was eliminated with the implementation of the Afghanistan Financial Management System. To date, only one case has been reported where there was an allegation of improper use of the system and the individual was caught. It should be noted that the vast majority of corruption found comes external to the Afghanistan Financial Management Information System. A transparent financial system guarantees fast economic growth of a nation. AFMIS provides controls, delegation of authority and audit trails that limits the opportunity for corruption to informal systems. The AFMIS has helped the government in the management and execution of budget, control of public expenditures, reduction of corruption, collection of revenues and on-time payment of salaries to government employees . The Ministry of Finance publishes an accounting manual and regular monthly budget reports to improve transparency in public finances. The beneficiaries of manual financial system in Afghanistan were the corrupt officials. Morocco: 225 wage suspensions and about 363 radiations between 2005 and 2007 Sierra Leone: the introduction of IFMIS and subsequent improvement of record management helped uncover anomalies in personnel records of 2000 civil servants, leading to 16% of the subset employees being immediately suspended from the payroll as a result

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what are some useful corruption indicators?

Many corruption indicators are based on public perception surveys. There is growing concern among anti-corruption agencies that perception-based indexes are not accurate measures. There is also some evidence that there can be gaps between informal procedures and technical PFM reforms leaving room for discretion and corrupt practices. Good corruption and transparency indices include: Global Integrity Index Open Budget Survey Revenue Watch Index Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index World Governance Indicators: Control of Corruption

what are some of the problems with GRP-enabled anticorruption?

Cost and Failure: can be high costs of automation, and there is a high failure rate among automation projects, particularly in government Graft shifting: corruption can move from the procurement officer level to those with control over the new automation system ICT sophistication: civil servants with superior ICT skills could manipulate systems

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 how can GRP anticorruption issues be overcome?

what GRP good practices aid anticorruption efforts?

Data Integrity: in back-end databases and validation for data input and data imports identify transaction manipulation Oversight ICT training: so that auditors are capable of managing system audits in addition to financial audits Patterns: through the development of fraud patterns that produce alerts and are used in exception reporting Phased implementation: through approaches to FMIS implementation that reduce the risk of failure, and build capacity and to allow absorption of key government reforms Security: through encryption, controlled audit trails, integrated controls and tying user permissions to the government organizational structure and chart of accounts Systems configuration: rather than customized or custom-developed GRP that can introduce poor practices Conclusions 1. GRP systems can be leveraged to reduce corruption through controls, audit and reporting. 2. GRP systems can be a foundation for anti-corruption activities but must have additional factors to be of significant use. 3. Effective country GRP systems reduce aid fungibility associated with off-budget donor funding. 4. GRP systems can become the cornerstone for fiscal transparency to enable citizen oversight to reduce corruption. 5. Properly designed GRP systems do not introduce significant new corruption risks.

There are very few best practices but many good practices in Public Financial Management. FreeBalance, a global provider of Government Resource Planning (GRP) software and services shares good practices from experience with developed and developing country governments around the world.

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