The public higher education system in the Republic of Kosovo faces big challenges. One essential part is ensuring the effective use of public funding. In this context the European Union-funded TEMPUS project “Increasing the Financial Autonomy and Accountability at Public Higher Education Institutions in Kosova”has given an important impulse. During the last 3 years the focus has been on the modernisation of the financial management practice, including the comprehensive training of the universities’ administrative staff. Thus, one essential component of the project was the technological modernisation of the financial management infrastructure. Through the support of the European Union the hardware and software of the financial departments of the University of Prishtina "Hasan Prishtina",the University of Peja "HaxhiZeka" and the University of Prizren "UkshinHoti" have been modernised at the expense of more than 180.000 EUR.“This will greatly enhance the organisational capacities with regard to the financial management of the project beneficiaries,”according to Horst Rode, CFO of the University of Applied Sciences - FH Campus Wien and Grant Holder of FAITH.
 
Capacity building with modernization of financial management
The project intends to support the modernisation of the financial administration of the three public universities in Prishtina, Peja und Prizren. The current system was unable to meet the necessity of increasing the transparency of expenses and the actual expenditure in comparison with the budget. Therefore, financial management software customised to the special needs of Higher Education Institutions has been developed in order to simplify the internal administrative processes. With the fully implementation of the software “Management of Budget and Finances” at the beginning of the Fiscal Year 2017 the financial staff of the three universities will enable to use public funds more effectively. Moreover, the use of the new software will contribute to more transparency by unifying templates as well as procedures related to financial management at university level. Apart from that the functionality of the web-based software also simplifies the reporting system, thus enabling employees to design and produce reports, which will lead to the elimination of unnecessary costs. “Through simultaneous access to different types of financial information this comprehensive system allows the universities and their teams to manage their institutions more transparently and efficiently in the future and paves the way towards full financial autonomy”, said Horst Rode, delighted with the positive impulses of the project.