CARANA News
Azerbaijan: New Computer and Datacom Center for
Ministry of Finance in Baku
| On May 6, 2005,
Ambassador Tom Adams, the Co-Chair for the Azerbaijan-US
Task Force on Economic Cooperation, inaugurated a “State-of-the-Art”
computer and data communications center, at the Ministry
of Finance in Baku. The US Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Reno
Harnish, the US-Azerbaijan task force team, the Azerbaijan’s
Minister of Finance, Mr. Avaz Alekperov, and his three senior
deputies Mr. Ilgar Fatizade (Budgeting), Mr. Heydar Assadov
(Treasury), and Mr. Azer Bayramov (Tax Revenues), as well
as a number of other local officials attended the event.
USAID and the World Bank, under the Treasury Information
Management System (TIMS) Project, jointly fund the center.
TIMS is a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Finance
(MOF), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World
Bank, and USAID for the modernization of the Azerbaijan
national treasury. USAID has funded the procurement and
implementation of the treasury software and awarded CARANA
Corporation, in September 2002, the systems integration
and quality assurance tasks.
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The newly
established center will connect Azerbaijan’s 86 regional
treasury offices, via satellites and a fiber optic link,
to the Central Treasury, at the Ministry of Finance building
in Baku. The Center will host USAID funded treasury software
(TIMS) that will automate and enhance the management and
execution of the state budget, permit the exchange of financial
and budgetary information within the Government, facilitate
financial audit of all Government financial transactions,
and form the core component of a future E-Government system
in Azerbaijan. TIMS is designed to connect and support,
in the long run, the nation’s 5,500 budget organizations,
so all revenue and expenditure data can be entered and monitored
by the Central Treasury on a real time basis. In addition,
TIMS will support a repository (or data warehouse) of financial
and budgetary data that can be accessed by Ministries and
other external agencies for audit, analysis, planning, forecasting,
and policy decisions.
With the inauguration of the Computer and Data Communications
Center, USAID has already accomplished a key milestone,
having introduced and established earlier, under the TIMS
Project, the technological foundation for: |
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Ensuring transparency of budget execution
and anti-corruption measures |
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Improving efficiency and financial control
of expenditure, revenue, and debt management |
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Creating a capability for full audit
of all financial transactions by a third party, like
the Chamber of Accounts or an international audit firm |
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Creating a centralized Government wide
data warehousing facility for financial and budgetary
data analysis and reporting |
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Establishing a technical support team
and department that will rollout TIMS to the remaining
Ministries and the 5,500 Budget Organizations after
the end of the project, early 2007. |
For more details please visit www.tims.az. |
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