Methodology of an Information Systems Strategy for Public Financial Management PFM.

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Methodology

6. A systematic analysis of business or functional processes, information content, and information flows can help establish a coherent framework for addressing problems both technical and organizational. In this paper, the authors apply a widely-used analytical methodology known as Information Strategy Planning (ISP)2 to the problem of Public Financial Management in developing countries. This analytical methodology yields a generic framework that links functions to information systems and ultimately to technology and implementation issues.

7. The analysis starts with developing an understanding of the functions associated with PFM and the information required by these functional processes. This includes:

defining the basic functions associated with PFM. This step involves preparation of a description of each functional process showing what the process entails and how it fits in the PFM framework; identifying the information created and required by each function; identifying which agencies are responsible for specific PFM functions. It is recognized that the organizational responsibilities for functional processes could vary from country to country and with time. Therefore, the organizational groupings used in this analysis and the names used in the paper are generic in nature and pertain more to the function being performed rather than an actual organizational unit. Examples are: Central Bank, Ministry of Finance, Planning Agency, Revenue Collection Agencies, Line Ministries, etc.; determining the information flows between the processes and the nature, volumes, and frequency of these flows. This also involves determining whether the information associated with the functional process is kept at a central location or is decentralized to different regional locations throughout the country. If it is the latter, it also involves determining how frequently this information is required to be aggregated at the center or referred to by other agencies of government; The Information Strategy Planning (ISP) methodology, promoted by IBM as Business Systems Planning (BSP) was widely adopted in the late 1970s, to define the nature and scope of the information systems required to support organizations, and the strategies to be pursued for the introduction of such systems. The ISP methodology has been described in detail by James Martin in his book on information engineering (Martin 1990).

ISP is a structured methodology based on the premise that the enterprise's information systems and technology should directly support its business objectives. The methodology enables the scope, characteristics, needs, and priorities of the information systems to be derived from a top-down analysis of the enterprise's business processes. By focusing on business processes (which are relatively unchanging), rather than on organizational groupings (which tend to change more often), the methodology arrives at systems configurations that will be more enduring and independent of organizational groupings.

determining the data characteristics of the information used and created by the function. This involves determining whether aggregate or detail data is required; whether the data pertains to a specific time slice, or time series information is required; whether the data is textual or alphanumeric, etc.

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