Management in public administration: how to successfully implement an ERP

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It is important to briefly outline the evolution of public accounting in Portugal. Many authors state that true public accounting only emerged after the revolution of 25 April 1974. With the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, and the independence of the courts, including the Court of Auditors, there was a reformulation of the legal regime of the Portuguese system.

From the mid-1990s onwards, with the Reform of the State Financial Administration (RAFE), the foundations of public accounting began to be laid , with the greatest achievement being in 1997 with the publication of the official public accounting plan (POCP). Until then, accounting was budgetary (cash).

With the recent introduction of the Accounting Standardization System for Public Administrations (SNC-AP), there has once again been a significant change in accounting terms, with new public accounting standards that require – and will continue to require – several adaptations.

Other laws/implications resulting from the last crisis or the entry of the Troika iran whatsapp number database Portugal in 2011 could be mentioned. In order to reduce the deficit and improve control of public accounts, we were forced to legislate on other matters such as, for example, the Law on Commitments and Late Payments.

Management in Public Administration: the biggest challenges in implementing an ERP
Human resources/aversion to change
We all know that in every area or company there are good and bad professionals. In public administration it is no different. There are people who are very interested and motivated to learn, develop and help the team (internal and external) to implement a project, but there are many others who do not.

In any project, when ERP implementation begins, it is important to pay attention to and understand who the true key users are (they may or may not coincide with the people identified by the management/board of directors/etc.). Key users are those people who help to bring the project to a successful conclusion. We must treat them as "princes and princesses" because these are the people who will actually help us and influence our colleagues.

As we know, the change management aspect is critical in any implementation. The most common answer we hear in public administration when we ask the question “why is this task carried out this way?” is “because it has always been this way”.

This change is particularly critical in public administration, as we can see with a basic example: a civil servant spends 10 days a month doing bank reconciliations. The ERP in public administration can create some automation that helps the person to perform this task in just 2 days. What do you do with this civil servant in the remaining 8 days? Perhaps in 60% of the organizations I have worked with, the option would be not to implement automatic bank reconciliation. In the remaining 40%, they would assign this person to other tasks that add value, but this requires leadership strength and the person's availability. Therefore, at this point it becomes essential:

Identify the true key users;
Identify who is “boycotting” the implementation and be very attentive to those users.
Create an environment of change by trying to motivate people, with explanations and facilitating access to information, preferably for people who are more averse to change.
At the AP, although dismissal is possible, I am still waiting for news of this event. Some people are comfortable doing a certain task, even if it is "wrist-slitting", but they are "entertained". Seniority is a position at the AP.
accounting know-how
As previously mentioned, the POCP was legislated in 1997, and other sectoral plans were legislated later. More than a decade after the mandatory application of the POCP, there were still bodies without this accounting and that reported only budgetary accounting. Thus, many public bodies have been using financial accounting for a relatively short time and have few human resources with accounting knowledge.

In some organizations, there are often people in the finance or accounting department who have degrees in history, geography, European studies or others. This is because, in public administration, to become a senior technician (with a higher salary) you need a higher education degree. For this reason, some workers have taken courses that they identify with more. However, they then work in the finance or accounting department. Be careful, the truth is that there are people with degrees in European studies who have better knowledge of accounting and public administration than I do, but most of them certainly do not.

This problem in public administration will only be eliminated in several generations. Now, all we can do is try to captivate people through accounting explanations, in an attempt to make them interested in these topics. Resilience, patience and oxygen are the three words needed, because repetition is the trick to learning.

It should be noted that there is a huge amount of legislation that public bodies are required to comply with, which increases the complexity of implementing an ERP . The responsibility for this situation will not lie with the bodies themselves, but rather with the legislators who regularly produce laws, which requires constant study and adaptation of the ERP.