Functional Review of the Ministry of Education, Science and ...

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Processes Financial management Financial management at the MEST shows very serious shortcomings – both from a legal and operational point of view. From the legal point of view, there are the following issues confirmed by the Auditor General 2007 Report and Auditor General 2008 Report: the MEST does not have its accounting, the MEST does not have procedures and controls in place for the preparation of financial statements to provide accurate and reliable financial information, the MEST has not implemented measures prescribed for asset management, e.g. it does not have asset officer. Operationally, there are the following problems with an impact on effectiveness and efficiency of the MEST’s financial management: the structure of the MEST budget (“budget lines”), which was established years ago and has not been reconsidered since that time, does not correspond to the current tasks of the MEST, there is no clear system of internal administration of finances is in place, there is considerable lack of financial literacy among the management at different levels, human capacity in financial area is absolutely insufficient (compare 7 posts currently provided for financial management at the MEST with the following numbers of employees in financial units in the EU-6 ministries: Latvia 32, Lithuania 28, Slovenia 72, Slovakia 43, Finland 38) Recommendation A.6: Rectify the legal problems by commencing implementation of the MEST’s accounting and nominating an asset officer. Recommendation A.7: Elaborate a system of internal administration of finances including the review of the current structure of the MEST’s budget. Recommendation A.8: Based on the adopted system of internal administration of finances perform training of financial literacy for all levels of the MEST’s management. As for the organizational aspect of the field of finances, see the section B Information technology and services Data are of crucial importance for any further development, but also for daily operation of the education sector. Data processing inevitably requires IT support. The current conditions for using IT at the MEST are insufficient. Many agendas that are normally administered with IT support are done just on paper. Centralized IT-maintenance services (for hardware as well as for software) are unsatisfactory. The main reasons are twofold: long delays in service delivery, unfamiliarity with the specific needs of education sector when speaking about application software support. There is no reliable system for data collection for education sector needs. The EMIS system developed recently and deployed to 48% of schools and most of municipalities is not functioning. Personal and technological capacities for information services for education sector are insufficient. A new EMIS project is under preparation within the WB-project IDEP. Recommendation A.9: Equip the relevant units of the MEST with software for basic administration support. Recommendation A.10: Create a central in-house IT-maintenance service provision for hardware (the maintenance itself may be outsourced) and basic software. Recommendation A.11: Ensure there is an area-based (PreUE, HE, R&D, financing, planning...) ITsupport service provision for specific software. 12
Recommendation A.12: Gradually add, to key departments where this is currently lacking, IT support staff familiar with the department’s area of responsibility. Recommendation A.13: Prepare the new EMIS project using the standard professional information system development approach. Recommendation A.14: Prepare a strategic document on information services development. As for the organizational aspect of the field of IT and data collection, see the section B. Administrative and managerial culture The organizational and administrative culture of the work at the MEST does not satisfy standard criteria. For example, there are no minutes from meetings, no materials for comments before meetings. Registration of documents is done just in the written form, not electronically. Meetings of management are inevitable part of working life of any organization. But unprepared meetings are usually ineffective and in fact a waste of time. There are well defined standard principles how to prepare and organize meetings to be as effective as possible. Preparation of participants for meetings is one of important issues. A part of this preparation is the study of materials that will be discussed at the meeting. Well-organized mechanisms for document flow are essential. Organizations like the MEST work mainly with documents. Therefore it is crucial to have a system of storing, administration and searching of documents. An electronic registration of documents is a powerful tool supporting such a system. The MEST has currently 9 departments 5 and 7 further units coordinated by the Permanent Secretary. Some of departments are closely related (for example departments in the area of pre-university education). The work of related departments needs to be closely coordinated because it is tightly interlocked. It cannot be expected that the coordination of this type can be performed by the Permanent Secretary only. EU-6 ministries use either coordinators for groups of departments or have a small number of large departments. Recommendation A.15: Prepare an internal regulation about submission of materials and organization of meetings of the MEST’s management. Recommendation A.16: Prepare and implement a project of electronic registration of documents. Recommendation A.17: Introduce a system of coordination based on creating of the following 2 groups of related units: Pre-university education group, Higher education and R&D group, Administration group, Nominate a coordinator (called Deputy Permanent Secretary or Director General) for each of the groups). As for the coordinator, there are 2 options: the coordinator will be one of the heads of departments within the group, 2 new posts of Deputy Permanent Secretaries or Directors General will be created. The coordinators will coordinate also agencies in the MEST’s portfolio working in the corresponding area. (The list of all units assigned to single groups can be seen from the diagram in Section C.) 5 Besides Inspection Department. 13
Page 1 and 2: Functional Review and Institutional
Page 3 and 4: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report prese
Page 5 and 6: Introduction This report presents r
Page 7 and 8: have been assessed and reviewed by
Page 9 and 10: Chart 3 Chart 4 In terms of how the
Page 11: Based on this analysis, we make 2 r
Page 15 and 16: iii) Division of special education,
Page 17 and 18: Internal Audit In the small EU coun
Page 19 and 20: There is the basic IT support, whil
Page 21 and 22: Table 2: Comparisons of agencies in
Page 23 and 24: Pre-university Education Developmen
Page 25 and 26: Table 3: Lower level of the recomme
Page 27 and 28: Based on the new R&D strategy decid
Page 29 and 30: Annex 1: List of interviews Organiz
Page 31: Annex 2: FRIDOM’s comments on the

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