by Michelle Jeanne Caracut, OC/OPI
THE SYSTEM-WIDE training on the Budget and Treasury Management System (BTMS) opens today, September 9, 2019 at the Conference Hall of the Institute’s Premier Research Institute of Science and Mathematics (PRISM).
The training, attended by personnel from the Budget Offices of 11 MSU campuses, aims to continually strengthen and innovate budgetary management processes and operations.
On behalf of the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (VCAA), Dr. Franco G. Teves, welcomes the participants to the five-day training.
“It’s really nice to learn that our national government is keeping on improving the systems, the financial management system, and this is one of those,” says Teves.
“A lot of challenges are before us and just like the national government, we would like to improve public services. We would like to increase public integrity and accountability,” Teves continues.
The Vice Chancellor said that the Institute’s, as well as the other MSU units’ goal, is to build trust within and among constituents, and with the national government, especially the line agencies, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Commission on Audit (COA).
“We are hoping for the support of the DBM and COA to the MSU system in our quest for global academic excellence and commitment to our becoming relevant in the community,” says the VCAA.
According to Mr. Richard Micubo, Information Technology Officer of MSU-IIT and co-chair of the Steering Committee of the activity, the BTMS is an integrated system which will replace the financial information system implemented in the campus.
Currently, MSU-IIT is using the Financial Management Information System developed by the Center of Information and Communication Technology for the Institute’s financial management operations in the campus.
“As the DBM says, the BTMS can speed up our processes later on. Most probably in the next few years, BTMS will be fully implemented and we will be using that whether we like it or not,” Micubo remarks.
“We have our computational resources and we have our own internet access so it won’t be a problem for the Institute,” he adds.
Micubo says that the DBM has mandated the use of BTMS to centralize all processes and for transactions to be seen in real-time by DBM and COA.
Micubo sees the first few months of implementation to be challenging as it would require additional and even duplication of work.
MSU-IIT cannot immediately abandon its FMIS for the BTMS due to certain modules existing in the current system that are not included in the new one, Micubo explains, effectively stating that the Institute will have to use both systems for a while.
Discussions with DBM shall be undertaken on how these modules should be integrated into the BTMS.
The BTMS training is mandated by the DBM, and organized by the MSU system, with MSU-IIT’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance and the Center for Information and Communication Technology taking the lead in conducting it.
Resource persons and trainers of the activity are the following personnel of DBM-BTMS Project Management Office: Annie Boy B. Luchavez, Justin Ferner V. Galgana, John Axl R. Acordon, Chatillon L. Carlos, Rhona Lyn R. Bautista, and Evelyn D. Collado.
Photos by: Alf Caro Evan Pacana and Jan Christian Pagarigan, OPI
Topics : BTMS financial management