Online auditing of spending

The state has cut in half the time required for payments to third parties and suppliers, and at the same time it is monitoring all of its spending electronically, knowing precisely at all stages the actions and disbursements made by public bodies.

With the new system for the electronic processing of receipts, by the time the payment of the invoice is completed, all the data has been received electronically and in this way the State General Accounting Office can control the amount of each expenditure, while at a later stage it will even be able to compare the same expenses of similar institutions, such as spending on the same materials at Greek hospitals. Therefore, the state will be able to deduce important conclusions about the way orders and contracts are made – and how unfair transactions can be avoided.

Kathimerini has learned there have already been cases where alarm bells have rung during the state expenditure control. More specifically, during the audit, important data were missing and the payment was not completed.

Soon, according to government sources, all agencies’ and central services’ expenses will be controlled electronically by the Court of Audit (the process of interconnection has already started).

The innovative information system has been implemented in all central administration agencies and their regional services. The system on which Secretary-General of Information Systems Dimosthenis Anagnostopoulos and Secretary-General for Fiscal Policy Thanos Petralias worked has as its object the control, liquidation and payment of expenses of the said services with the ultimate goal of speeding up the procedures for paying the expenses of the bodies of the central administration.

Through the system, all supporting documents for an expenditure (invoices, contracts, contractors’ offers etc) are gathered in electronic form in a single file, which is unique for each expenditure. The prescribed supporting documents are stored in this digital folder, either digitally signed or in a digitized form with the digital signature of the certified user of the system.