Finance Senior Officer

Job Specific Information 

The HIQI Senior Finance Officer oversees, monitors and reports on the UNOPS and MoH portions of the grant as a whole. Working with the PIU to ensure that finances are streamlined and monitored in a systematic manner for ease of tracking and reporting. 

Under the direct supervision of the HIQI Project Manager and Head of Support Services, the Senior Finance Officer provides advisory, management, and planning services to ensure compliant planning, administration, and management (including budget, treasury and cash management) of the Business Unit’s financial resources; and maintains oversight and control of Programme financial activities, providing value-added advisory services.

Project Information: The Health Information Quality Improvement (HIQI) Project 

The HIQI project is implemented under the Ministry of Health Sri Lanka. The project is funded by the Global Fund by the direction of the Government of Germany who transferred a foreign debt owed by Sri Lanka to Germany into a grant under a debt2health scheme. The total grant amount is US$25 million; UNOPS implementation value is approximately US$6,800,000. The project as a whole is in its third year of implementation under the MoH; UNOPS has been requested to assist with bringing the project back on track. The HIQI project will undertake the digital transformation of the MoH by procuring and installing hardware at the Health Information Unit at the Ministry and across 30 pilot hospitals in Sri Lanka. The project will conduct networking, interconnectivity and interoperability activities as well. The project has multiple components and entities managed at the MoH by the Project Implementation Unit (PIU). The Senior Finance Officer will work closely with the Project Implementation Unit at MoH and the UNOPS project team in the finance management and reporting aspects of the HIQI Project as a whole. The digitization scope begins centrally at the MoH and will interlink and expand to 30-50 government hospitals. The project will involve stakeholders from the public and private IT sector in Sri Lanka and internationally and will closely involve the HIU, the lead in this process, along with identified government hospitals earmarked for digitization.   

The Global Fund 

• The Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF) is a partnership of Governments, civil society, technical agencies, the private sector and people affected by the three diseases; that pools the World’s resources to invest strategically in programmes to end the HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria as epidemics. As an international organization, the GF mobilizes and invests more than USD 4 billion annually to support disease control programmes in more than 100 priority low and middle income countries.
• The Global Fund uses a system of performance-based funding, whereby each grant disbursement may be reduced, suspended, or canceled due to poor grant performance. Funds are released to beneficiary countries upon review of results and once the Global Fund is satisfied with both the programmatic and financial performance.
• The Global Fund is a valued Partner to the Government of Sri Lanka. Since 2002, Sri Lanka has benefitted from GF support in excess of USD 110 million as a contribution to national programmes for the control of the three diseases. The GF resources have been invested in disease control advocacy, prevention and management interventions.
• The Global Fund Operating Context in Sri Lanka

The in-country structures involved in the implementation of Global Fund grants comprise: 

• Sri Lanka Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) – is a country- level public-private partnership and whose role is, among others, to coordinate the development of Concept Note(s) to the Global Fund for relevant Programme(s) based on priority needs at the national level; nominate Principal Recipients and oversee the implementation of Programme Activities
• Principal Recipient (PR)/Grantee – The Ministry of Health (MOH)) is the in-country institution that is legally responsible for programme administration, results and financial accountability in accordance with the Grant Agreement. MOH has signed the Grant Agreements with the Global Fund for the following grants LKA-T-MOH, LKA-S-MOH, LKA-H-MOH. The key functions of the PR comprise Grant management and implementation, partnership coordination, technical coordination, procurement and supply chain management oversight, financial management, and monitoring and reporting.
• Sub-Recipients (SR) – This is a recipient who receives Grant Funds directly or indirectly from the PR and undertakes to implement certain Programme Activities. For the current Grants executed by The National Treasury, the SRs are The Family Planning Association (FPA) of Sri Lanka .
• Local Fund Agent (LFA) – A Local Fund Agent provides assurance to the Global Fund in countries where Global Fund grants are implemented. The LFA is engaged by the Global Fund to provide oversight, verification and/or reporting services to the Global Fund concerning Program implementation in Sri Lanka. The current LFA is Deloitte Advisory Services (Pvt) Ltd.

Functional Responsibilities

Ensures finance, business, administration and implementation processes of the project are efficient and integrated to work together focusing on achievement of the following results: 

• Comply fully with UN/UNOPS rules, regulations, and policies of financial activities, financial  recording/reporting system and follow-up on audit recommendations; implementation of effective  internal controls, proper functioning of a client-oriented financial resources management system.
• Identify and map out current business processes, including persons (subject-matter experts) and  steps involved.
• Analyse and assist the project unit to develop tools to operationalize improved business process flows,  including an overall action plan.
• Develop an amended grant operations manual, as appropriate, for managing the Global Fund’s  grants that is aligned with the Government of Sri Lanka’s regulatory framework on processes that  impact the Global Fund’s grants.

Accountability of Finance Management and finance procedural systems:

• Review the current financial management information system (FMIS) solution with a view to giving  recommendations as to if the current FMIS is fit for purpose.
• (The target FMIS should enable MOH to  efficiently manage multiple grants and government funding, as well as to provide a holistic view of the  financial situation of the organization.The system should be compliant with the applicable government accounting standards, meet the donor  accounting and reporting requirements and enable MOH to produce compliant reports in accordance  with its applicable accounting framework. In addition, it should provide a solid platform for future  development and growth).

HR Oversight of Finance Management personnel 

• Review the current Human Resources component in the Finance team of the PIU and other related finance departments pertaining to the project to ascertain if the team has staffing of the right caliber and of the right size to effectively perform its mandate.
• Review the last version of or perform a grant implementer capacity assessment which will identify key  gaps in the PRs Financial Management Capacity and propose an action plan to address the same.
• Support the project manager to implement the capacity building plan over a period of not more than six months. This could  include;
• Providing hands-on training support on financial and accounting procedures including best  practices for financial management as it relates to budgeting, accounting and reporting in various areas in meeting financial management requirements.
• Support staff effectively to enforce internal controls to ensure that all payments are eligible, justified  and adequately supported.
• Support the PIU in the oversight management of their Sub-recipient (SR) and other sub-SRs as the  case may be; performing the financial review of the SRs, monitoring and supervision of all SRs and implementer levels below that of SRs

Accounts and payments: Ensures and is accountable for the following: 

• Ensure  that vouchers processed are matched and completed, transactions are correctly recorded and posted in ERP; travel claims and other entitlements are duly processed.
• Provide quality control of the account by performing ongoing review, analysis and reconciliation of accounts.  Investigation of discrepancies and initiation of timely corrective actions on unposted vouchers, including the vouchers with budget check errors, match exceptions, unapproved vouchers. Timely response to  PIU and HIQI PM requests to resolve financial data issues.
• Provide monitoring and control of the Accounts Receivables for UNOPS projects and follow up with partners on  contributions, maintenance of the General Ledger.
• Ensuring proper maintenance of the financial accounts; preparation of financial records, statements  and reports as required or approval of the work of subordinates; coordination of field replies to internal  and external audit queries;
• Ensuring proper receipt, management, safeguarding and disbursement of payments handled by the  field; review, modification, initiation and implementation of internal control procedures in coordination  with PM and PIU;
• Proper control of the supporting documents for payments; preparation of all types of vouchers; Pay  Cycle and payments execution;
• Preparation of timely financial reports for submission to the funding agency in accordance with  UNOPS rules, and in line with the established procedures;
• Monitoring of financial exception reports for unusual activities, transactions and investigation of  anomalies or unusual transactions;
• Ensuring proper maintenance of the Accounts Receivables for UNOPS projects and follow-up with  partners on contributions
• Financial Oversight of procurement and non procurement transactions
• Support the PIU for the oversight management of all Financial transactions under the grant to ensure  that the transactions fulfill the following criteria;
• Proper authorization according to the PR approval authority matrix.
• Availability of complete documentation and coded for data entry.
• Availability of clear evidence of value for money.
• The methodology for the position will largely entail in-depth interviews of all persons involved in the business processes, systems and People Management (subject-matter experts) from the PR, SRs as key beneficiaries of services provided by PR, and any other relevant stakeholders. Engagement of SRs and other stakeholders has potential to provide insight into problems identified with the current processes.

Activities to be undertaken include: 

• Desk review of Global Fund Policy documents, Global Fund grants (2022 – 2024), (Draft Customized) Operational Manual for Global Fund Grants in Sri Lanka, Programme Based Budgeting Manual, Financial Regulation 1992, Delegation of Financial Authority issued by the Secretary of Health, Digital Health Blueprint, procurement plan among other relevant documents.

One-on-one interviews with GF grants implementation stakeholders, including the following: 

• Programme Accountants and relevant finance staff
• Programme Directors and Coordinators/ Consultants
• Programme Procurement Officer/ Assistant
• Programme Human Resource Officer/ Assistant
• Ministry of Health Chief Finance Officer and relevant Accountant – SR and SSR Accountants/ finance staff
• Business process review (BPR) team meetings and workshops consisting of;
• Initial stakeholder meeting to define roadmap for BPR.
• Workshop for subject-matter experts to determine the current processes and sub-processes; and identify gaps/ problems in relation to global best practices and benchmarks
• Workshop for stakeholders and subject-matter experts to develop an overall business process improvement action plan, and specific tools -technical recommendations and Operation Manual for Global Fund Grants in Sri Lanka.
• Managing UNOPS financial systems on the project, enure compliance and reporting guidelines are fulfilled

Source: https://jobs.unops.org/Pages/ViewVacancy/VADetails.aspx?id=29086