Education Ministry ends manual processing of financial transactions, goes digital

In line with its efforts to embrace digital transformation, the Ministry of Education has officially shifted its financial decision-making process to a fully digital system. This move is designed to safeguard employee rights and minimize the accumulation of internal debts.

The transition, which went into effect in early June, follows the successful training of staff in the Beneficiary Support Department at the ministry’s headquarters and across the educational regions.

The Ministry’s financial sector has emphasized that it will no longer accept manually submitted decisions. Instead, all financial transactions must now be handled through the official mail and correspondence system.
The Al-Rai daily quoting educational sources said, the Ministry has finalized a detailed, automated workflow to manage financial decisions, outlining a sequence of steps that streamline the process.

The new mechanism begins with the relevant departments in each educational region entering financial decisions into the system. Once the documentation cycle is complete, the original documents are sent to the General Records Department of the region. From there, financial decisions are transmitted electronically to the Payroll Division Secretariat, accompanied by scanned copies of the original documents and their attachments.

The original financial decisions are retained in the employee’s file by the issuing authority. The Secretariat of the Financial Administration then routes these electronic decisions to the appropriate payroll accountant based on the distribution of work centers. Upon receiving the decisions, the payroll staff executes the entries on both the salary card and the integrated financial system.

Once implemented, the payroll accounting officer sends the decisions to the audit and review department, where auditors verify their execution within the integrated system. If confirmed, the status of each decision is updated to “implemented” in the mail and correspondence system.

If a financial decision needs to be moved between accountants within the same division, the transfer is carried out directly between the accountants based on the designated work centers, without involving the secretariat.
However, for transfers outside the Payroll Division, the secretariat handles the process, including proper labeling of the target work center in the system. A new feature has been added to the system to facilitate this process—a designated secretariat for each Payroll Division.

The secretariat is also tasked with managing all external transfers of financial decisions. Notably, the process for handling salary suspension decisions remains unchanged. These decisions are still sent directly from the educational region to the head of the Payroll Division.

The Ministry’s digitization of its financial decisions marks a significant step forward in improving administrative efficiency, ensuring accountability, and aligning with national goals for a smarter, more secure government infrastructure.