The Royal Civil Service Commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly launched the piloting of Cluster Finance Services, their collaborative initiative, in Bumthang this week.
The objective of the initiative is based on the concept of sharing of services by leveraging the use of ICT. It will bring together all finance personnel working in various regional/autonomous/branch offices under one cluster office in each region or dzongkhag. However, this initiative does not include the finance sections of the dzongkhag administration.
All finance services would be catered from the office of Cluster Finance Services irrespective of the location of the agencies.
The initiative will optimize and rationalize the deployment of finance personnel and eliminate the current practice of their placement in individual agencies and achieve the objective of doing more with less.
This initiative is expected to enhance prudent fiscal discipline through proper check and control mechanisms, and institute adequate internal control systems in the agencies.
It is also expected to improve the performance and delivery of finance services through enhanced efficiency of finance personnel and standardized service delivery across agencies.
The Cluster Finance Services is expected to contribute towards restructuring the budget process and financial norms as enshrined in the Royal Kasho on Civil Service Reform.
This initiative was also launched for the regional offices under Paro Dzongkhag on April 8. It will be implemented on a pilot basis for regional offices under Bumthang and Paro Dzongkhags until June this year and will be rolled out in Thimphu and other Dzongkhags in a phased manner from July 2021.
The pilot initiative is funded by contributions from the European Union and Austrian Development Agency, and administered by the World Bank.