About the State Treasury

The State Treasury is a multidisciplinary government agency with 550 employees. It produces internal corporate services for central government (such as financial, personnel administration and IT services), administers state funds and loans and is responsible for the government’s central bookkeeping. The State Treasury also grants compensations for military injury, crime damage and accident and administers state guarantees for loans as well as interest subsidies.

What they needed
The need to increase productivity was and remains the basis of the ongoing Kieku program. The natural attrition of government personnel is 17,300 in 2011-2016, of which over 15,700 are employees who retire. Two-thirds of the 17,300 jobs will be filled, which means that approximately 11,200 people need to be recruited. Activities to increase productivity are needed in order to maintain the quality of government services in spite of a reduction of some 6,000 employees.

To reach this ambitious goal, the Treasury wanted to introduce shared services that would ensure consistent quality and lower running costs. Previously, each agency or department had run its own system.

The challenge

  • Scale – handling the information needs of some 70 agencies and departments and testing thousands of connections and processes.
  • Complex integration – many different contractual agreements in the public sector; for example, some staff have fixed hours and salary, while others work on time-based contracts and bonus payments.
  • Cultural change – government agencies had to adapt to new ways of working and a downward shift in decision-making.

Our answer
The State Treasury chose us in 2008 to be its Kieku implementation partner, based on our expertise, ability to work with others and costing. We were familiar with existing processes – many Finnish government departments and agencies used CGI financial, payroll and HR systems. This was a real bonus in smoothing the transition to a shared service. Our long expertise in SAP was also crucial.

Kieku implementations
We completed the definitions phase by August 2009 and began implementing the Kieku system, with extensive testing in spring and summer 2010. The complexities of the project meant that around 100 CGI professionals worked alongside State Treasury staff. The Finnish central government sector is now anticipating a 20% reduction in administration costs, greater efficiency and better job satisfaction. The common financial and personnel administration processes and the Kieku information system have now been adopted within four agencies (Migri, the Emergency Services College, the Academy of Finland and the State Treasury). Processes and the Kieku-system will go live in the remaining offices over the next few years. Around 70,000 public sector employees will use the Kieku-system, including 3,000 professional financial and HR staff.

Contact us for more information