News

Applications are invited for grants to support public financial management reform projects in countries that are intended beneficiaries under the SAFE Trust Fund. The deadline for proposals is 31 December 2011.

 

The SAFE Trust Fund group includes two pools of funds to provide support for activities led by governments to assess public financial management (PFM) performance, identify and implement actions to achieve improvements in public financial management and share knowledge and good practices across countries in the Europe and Central Asia region:

Pool 1 – is a multi-donor trust fund established by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) which is open to projects from Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyz Republic, Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Pool 2 – is a single donor trust fund established by the European Commission through the multi-beneficiary instrument for pre-accession (MB IPA) which is open to projects from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo .
The Project Steering Committee will decide which Pool will be used to fund individual projects approved under the programme. The SAFE trust fund group is administered by the World Bank. 

 

Objectives for the SAFE trust fund

The SAFE trust fund group seeks to improve the status of PFM in participating beneficiaries in a systematic way through:

(i)    improving understanding of PFM status in target beneficiaries;
(ii)    supporting design, implementation and management of the PFM reform agenda by governments, particularly on reform activities that are being undertaken simultaneously across the region;
(iii)    developing shared knowledge and experience on PFM reform to strengthen reform effectiveness and focus development partner support; and
(iv)    improving coordination between donors and their relationships with governments; towards limiting overlaps, and concentrating declining donor support in the region.

 

Eligible activities

There are three separate Pillars for SAFE funded projects:

 Pillar I: Assessment of PFM status
•    Support to government-led reviews of PFM arrangements using standard international PEFA measurement framework or related diagnostic and analytical tools;
•    Analysis of PFM status by skilled professionals using PEFA or related methodology;
•    Preparation and dissemination of reports on financial management performance.

Pillar II: Support for PFM reform management
•    Research, analysis and design of PFM reform action plan by government, in consultation with other development partners;
•    Developing networks within governments to implement reforms relating to one or more aspects of the PEFA framework;
•    Research to obtain deeper understanding of the results of diagnostic assessments, as well as identification and design of actions required to address weaknesses;
•    Detailed analysis of specific PFM areas of importance or concern and development of action plans to address concerns or build on achievements.

Pillar III: Expanding PFM knowledge and capability
•    Analysis of progress and outcomes in specific beneficiaries as well as cross-cutting perspectives;
•    Benchmarking and comparative analysis, involving studies of progress against specific indicators or groups of indicators, facilitation of working groups across beneficiaries to explore differences and identify practical actions to address weaknesses in one or more location;
•    Wider experience and knowledge sharing, including provision of forums for exchange of information and experience, and joint activities to address common development priorities in PFM across the region.

Project selection criteria
•    Consistency with SAFE objectives and program outcomes;
•    Activities are within the scope of the Pillars and within available funds. Minimum project size for SAFE is $50,000 and maximum is $200,000;
•    Demonstrable improvements in understanding, standards or capability in relation to one or more dimensions of the PEFA framework or associated aspects of PFM and accountability;
•    Consistency with potential recipient development priorities, policies and strategic development plans and, where appropriate, donor strategies and agreements;
•    Do not duplicate, conflict or overlap with projects financed through other programs;
•    Have potential benefits for one or more country in terms of knowledge or experience sharing or scope for comparative assessment where possible and ideally have a regional benefit; and
•    Project expenditures must be incurred within the timeframe of SAFE operations, which at present is until 30 June 2014 for Pool 1 and 30 November 2014 for Pool 2.
 

PROJECT PROPOSAL FORM

 

Deadline for applications

PEM PAL events are an essential component of the PEM PAL network. Meetings, video conferences, exchange visits, report sharing, web-based exchanges, and other informal contacts strengthen relations within the community and help officials receive real-time feedback from their peers.

Members of the Steering committee have confirmed the guidelines for PEM PAL events and study visits. The rules incorporated in these documents cover the standard procedures as well as areas of responsibilities of the PEM PAL network members.

We hope that this information will be a useful reminder to you of your responsibilities. Guidelines are available on our website at http://www.pempal.org/activities/.

We thank you for your attention to this important matter.

PEM PAL secretariat

Deanna Aubrey has recently joined the PEM PAL team as Community Facilitator and will take up the one year position, based in the CEF Ljubljana, from early next year. 

She has 22 years professional experience in public expenditure management specializing in budget planning, preparation and execution.  Her 15 years at the national and sub-national levels of Government in Australia included contributing to the preparation of the Australian Government Budget and advising Ministers on policy options and recommendations in health, social welfare and mining related sectors.   For the last seven years, she has coached and advised Ministries of Finance for USAID and DFID funded projects in Kosovo, Afghanistan and currently Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

She sees the PEM PAL network as an extremely valuable approach to sharing, learning and progressing public financial management reforms and would like to position and brand the network as the lead peer assisted learning provider for the European and Central Asian region.

“ The position of PEMPAL Community Facilitator is my dream job as it will enable me to continue my passion for learning and to use my public financial management skills acquired in Australia and overseas  to assist the PEMPAL CoP Leadership Teams, Steering Committee and Secretariat  to achieve their vision and mission. Outside of this passion I practice yoga to keep fit, enjoy good conversation, and entertaining people with my guitar and songs.”

Deanna will have formal contact details established early next year.  However, she encourages people to contact her on her personal email deanna_aubrey@hotmail.com or + 387 62 807 533 if they have any questions or if she can help in anyway.   As for next steps, she will shortly circulate a draft action plan for her new role to gain input and feedback and she looks forward to meeting everyone at the Plenary meeting in Zagreb.

Members of the Steering Committee will meet again on December 15 , 2010.

The meeting will be held via Adobe Connect. The main topics to be disscused are:

Between October 14 and 19, 2010, members of the PEM PAL Internal Audit Community of Practice (IA CoP) met in Bled, Slovenia for two back to back workshops to discuss and create a common understanding about IA manual and design the Body of Knowledge for public sector internal auditors. The meeting was organized by PEM PAL Secretariat.  

Between October 11 and 13, 2010, members of the PEM PAL Treasury Community of Practice (TCoP) met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to discuss implementation of the integrated budget classification and chart of accounts. The meeting was organized in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance of Tajikistan.  

The meeting was opened by Ms. Elena Nikulina, PEM PAL Task Manager at the World Bank, and Mr. Shavkat Sohibov, Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Finance of Tajikistan.

The participants discussed the implementation of the integrated budget classification and chart of accounts (BC & CoA). The objective of the workshop was to allow the Treasury CoP members to exchange experiences and transfer knowledge related to the BC and CoA. Each country was also asked to prepare a case study for presentation and discussion.

Some 30 representatives of ministries of finance from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan and Ukraine attended the meeting. Participants agreed that learning the rules is a necessary prerequisite to develop and implement integrated budget classification and chart of accounts, although specific practices cannot be directly translated from one country into another. They also emphasized that sharing of best practices and experience is beneficial for learning from one another and important for avoiding discrepancies.

Representatives of the donor institutions participated at the meeting as observers. The Center of Excellence in Finance (CEF) attended the meeting in the capacity of the PEM PAL Secretariat.

At the PEM PAL Secretariat we are continually improving PEM PAL website to make it as useful to its members as possible. In order to analyze the PEM PAL members' views on the functionality of the PEM PAL site a short exit survey was prepared.

The key findings of this exit survey are as follows:
•    Overall, the PEM PAL members are satisfied with their experience with the site.
•    Most PEM PAL members use the website on a monthly basis, followed by those who use it either weekly or less than once per month. Encouraging finding is the fact that the percent of those who have first visited the PEM PAL website only for the purpose of providing the answers for this survey is low, indicating that the majority of the PEM PAL members uses the site and browses through its contents.
•    In general PEM PAL members agree that they will return to the website and that they will recommend this site to their colleagues as well.
•    The main reason why members visit the site is to learn about the latest news on PEM PAL network activities and developments and to browse through the announcements of the forthcoming events. Many of them also visit the site after the events to download the Power Point Presentations and other materials used during workshops.
•    Based on the previous experience PEM PAL members have with other sites they in general rate the design, functionality, interactivity and available contents as satisfactory.
•    The biggest challenges identified with regard to the PEM PAL site include the fact that it takes too long to load the page, followed by the fact that information the they are looking for is either not available or not well organized. The challenge of navigation through the contents also remains an area of improvement.

The performed analysis of the PEM PAL members’ opinion on the functionality of the PEM PAL website proves that PEM PAL’s website leaves room for style and substance improvements.  It is important to note that the design of the PEM PAL website and the information it provides are key variables that affect its effectiveness. To increase its effectiveness thus more efforts will be put into keeping the site current, relevant, easy to use and provide benefits to its members as typically users like well-organized sites that make important information easy to find.