Opinions & Interviews

MOSCOW, 5 September (BelTA) – Government agencies in Belarus have switched to digital interaction procedures in interagency communication. The statement was made by Chairman of the State Control Committee of Belarus Leonid Anfimov at a session of the CIS Council of the Supreme Audit Institutions in Moscow on 5 September, BelTA has learned. The session was dedicated to the role of information technologies in the development and improvement of effectiveness of state administration.

According to the official, Belarusian government agencies and their subordinate organizations have switched to digital document workflow.

Leonid Anfimov remarked that work is in progress in Belarus to introduce information systems to allow citizens to perform administrative procedures using digital technologies starting with submitting digital applications and identifying the citizens and ending with getting the results as digital documents.

“There is no doubt that the introduction of new information technologies is crucial to more effective operation of supreme financial audit agencies,” said the official. “This is why information support for the operation of the State Control Committee of Belarus gets better all the time.”

Leonid Anfimov mentioned several components the work consists of. First, the State Control Committee uses its legal authority to acquire or provide access to any information systems of government agencies and other organizations. As an example Leonid Anfimov mentioned the dedicated government procurement website, which offers information about demands and purchases (buyer specifications, bids, decisions made by buyers, information about contracts and their fulfillment). The State Control Committee enjoys full access to this information resource. This information is used for planning audits and checks.

The second part of the efforts to improve the information support for the operation of the State Control Committee is the information resources, which allow processing incoming information bearing in mind requirements of the committee’s personnel. A number of systems are in use to process information about the state budget, foreign currency circulation, foreign trade, and stock trade. The stock trade oversight system allows detecting possible machinations with blocks of stock, which may damage interests of the state or of other shareholders.

The third part is represented by information systems, which help the State Control Committee do its job.

“Control over the fulfillment of instructions given by the head of state is one of the core functions of the State Control Committee,” stressed Leonid Anfimov. “All the data is stored and processed by a dedicated information system for overseeing the fulfillment of instructions of the president of the Republic of Belarus. All the central and municipal government agencies are connected to the system. The system can add new instructions to the tracker and can track progress in their fulfillment.”

Leonid Anfimov added that the State Control Committee coordinates the audits and checks performed by auditing and oversight agencies. Apart from that, the committee is busy modernizing its own audit information system. “Updating the system, we’ve tried to take into account the experience of colleagues from the supreme financial audit bodies of the CIS states. We are intent on creating software and hardware infrastructure to automate the planning of work, authorization, tracking, and control over the results of audits and checks,” he said.