USAID PS3+ supports govt to strengthen financial tracking system

DODOMA: THE USAID Public Sector Systems Strengthening Plus (USAID PS3+) is collaborating with the President’s Office Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG) on a project to modernize the Inspection and Finance Tracking Management Information System (IFTMIS).

This web-based computer will streamline inspectorate and financial tracking business processes for local governments. The USAID PS3+ is funded by the US government and implemented through USAID with support from the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

IFTMIS development Team comprised of different Tanzanian developers/programmers from PORALG and USAID PS3+. This will help in ensuring project sustainability on operational and further requirements relating to the development and maintenance of the system.

According to USAID PS3+ Public Financial Management Director, Abdul Kitula, IFTMIS improvement has been completed and refinements have been made to the analytics and dashboards of the Inspection module.

Kitula said these enhancements are designed to provide users with better insights and streamline the inspection workflow. This will ultimately lead to a more efficient and effective inspection process and improved overall insight into public fund expenditure.

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“Full function of IFTMIS is expected to reduce time and financial resource in conducting inspections and financial tracking as well as enhancing good governance in Local Government Authorities by strengthening controls over use of public resources”, said Kitula.

Speaking of the existing challenges faced during inspection and tracking of local government finances, PORALG Principle Internal Auditor Hamis Mjanja said that there is unavailability of the automated mechanism to inspect and track funds disbursed to Local Government Authorities (LGAs) which leads to increase of audit queries and decrease of unqualified audit opinion as well.

As the results affect good governance in local government authorities. He also said that it is difficult to coordinate preparation and scrutiny of the LGAs’ responses and action plans for implementing Controller and Auditor General (CAG) recommendations, as the coordination and preparation is done manually.

Timely communication among LGAs external audit stakeholders National Audit Office (NAO), LGAs, Regional Secretariats (RS), PO-RALG and Local Authorities Accounts Committee (LAAC) especially on audit reports and progress on implementing CAG audit recommendations or verification results of the audit responses has been difficulty.

This caused problems in audit follow-up whereby availability of reliable data especially on audit queries implementation status becomes difficult.

As IFTMIS will be integrated with other systems, it is expected to make it easy to extract data from various electronic systems used by LGAs in financial management and service delivery which are useful in financial tracking and inspections conducted by the unit.

As part of IFTMIS deployment, a five-day training of National trainers (NTOTs) whereby a total of 25 officials from PORALG Headquarters (HQ), RS and LGAs was conducted. Officials who participated in the training early August 2024 in Mwanza were Financial Management Officers (FMOs), Internal Auditors and ICTOs from PO-RALG HQ and RS and they are expected to later train 3,652 System Users from RS and LGAs on how to prepare, verify and implement responses and action plan for implementation of CAG recommendations through IFTMIS.

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This NTOTs training will create a team that PORALG will use in training 184 LGAs and 26 RSs as the end users of the IFTMIS.

According to the PORALG Principle Internal Auditor, Mr Mjanja, PORALG in collaboration with USAID PS3+ envisioned to digitize the internal operation for inspection as well as responding to CAG and other directives from relevant organs and be in use by November 2024 according to existing work plan.