A Comprehensive Government Financial Management Information System Benchmark

Assess Your Government FMIS Implementation and Identify Valuable Improvements!

Background: Earlier today, a speaker at the World Bank FMIS Community of Practice webinar suggested that there is no established benchmark for government FMIS systems.

• There is a checklist in Appendix C of this World Bank document: Ensuring Better PFM Outcomes with FMIS Investments: An Operational Guidance Note for FMIS Project Teams Designing and Implementing, with FMIS Solutions, written by Ali Hashim, Khuram Farooq, and Moritz Piatti-Fünfkirchen, in Appendix C.
• It’s an excellent resource and a good starting point for benchmarking FMIS in government.

We like the checklist but thought that a benchmark needs more granularity. Our innovation and PFM teams worked together to update the checklist, and leverage as part of our A-i³+qM methodology¹ that is designed exclusively for government and public finance advisory, implementation, and sustainability services.

We extended the checklist with content from the Commonwealth Secretariat Self-Assessment Tool that has some FMIS elements. And, we developed more granular elements with a more specificity, particularly in information technology and public accounting.

The bottom line is an IFMIS benchmark consisting of:

• 20 TSA elements
• 73 Core Functionality elements
• 62 Ancillary Feature elements
• 15 Coverage & Utilization elements
• 145 Technical Aspect elements

The benchmark follows the World Bank structure with colour coding:

• Black for original World Bank content
• Red for Commonwealth Secretariat content
• Green for FreeBalance content

How does FreeBalance leverage the template available in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel?

• Communicates the current state of any government FMIS system
• Adapts to evaluation weighting based on the country capacity context
• Integrates with other PFM reform tools that we’ve developed

How do you get a copy of the benchmark and a short briefing?

• Email us at info@freebalance.com
• Or, tweet us at @freebalance

There is no charge for the benchmark and briefing

¹ About the FreeBalance A-i³+qM methodology

FreeBalance uses an ISO-9001:2015 certified service methodology called A-i³+qM – accelerated, integrated, iterative, implementation-focused and quality management system that has the following characteristics:

• Government-Specific developed over 35 years of government-only projects, with emphasis on experienced teams, change management and capacity building 
• Government Good Practices using problem diagnostics, and advocating legal and appropriate practices for the context
• Integrated Product & Project Methodology that accelerates delivery, enables adapting software to meet needs, and eliminates the problem of orphan code through fully commercially-supported customization
• Modern Effective Agile through staging proven scientific commercial practices that increase implementation success rates, overcome uncertainty, and improve communications

Services Portfolio

The FreeBalance professional services portfolio includes:

• (ADV) Advisory Services: Set of governance, public finance, change management, program management, and IT advisory services
• (IMP) Implementation Services: Comprehensive enterprise software and FMIS implementation service
• (SUS) Sustainability Services: Capacity building, training, change management, support & maintenance services

These services leverage over 250 tools. Some are commercial well-known tools. Some are tools developed by governments, or for governments. Most have been developed by FreeBalance over the past 3 decades of experience.