Ministry of Economic Affairs

The development of eSidif, the new financial information system, has been one of the largest development projects undertaken by the Argentinian Government in its history. Every year the government handles over 185 billion US dollars in financial transactions through eSidif. There is no system with such relevance in the country.

"I would like to emphasize Hexacta's strong commitment to reach the milestones of the project and its capacity and will to conform integrated teams with the client."

Marta Vázquez - Coordinator of the e-Sidif project, Treasury Department, Ministry of Economy and Production of the Argentine Republic

Brief description of the organization

The Systems Department in the Office of Finance is in charge of planning, integrating and managing the information and communication’s platform used by all the organizational units of the Public Administration. It is also in charge of the system’s maintenance, training, and user support.

The most important system maintained by this department is Sidif, which includes the following modules: Budget Management, Expenses, Payments, Treasury, Bank Reconciliation and Resources. This system is also integrated with entities such as the National Bank and the Central Bank of Argentina.

The Challenge

Managing the financial accounts of a federal country is complex. Decentralized budget preparation and spending is required for achieving effectiveness and creating accountability throughout the many hundreds of agencies of the government. Centralization is required for efficiency and control. Balancing both is a delicate act.

Therefore, the Ministry of Economy of Argentina launched a very ambitious plan to overhaul the main IT application supporting the financial operation of the whole federal government. The main goal was to implement a modern, flexible and comprehensive tool that would drive accountability, efficiency, transparency and control into all the financial processes of the federal government. The most advanced technologies available should be used and appropriate software development processes should be applied.

To this end, it was decided to combine the skills and knowledge from the industry and the academic environment to obtain the best results:

The Ministry of Economy provided a group of analysts, a testing team and a Methodology and Quality Assurance Group.
Hexacta would provide its experience in the industry, developing complex systems in short timeframes and keeping focus on meeting project commitments.
Lifia (Laboratory for Research and Training in Advanced Informatics, from the National University of La Plata) would provide its experience as a technology transfer group.

Solution

During the first phase of the project, Hexacta built the following architectural components: Data Translator, Reporting Solutions, Security Module, Historical Information Management, Attachments Management, Batch Processes Management, definition of Rich Client structure based on Eclipse RCP and custom widgets for web presentation layer using the Tapestry framework.

Due to client satisfaction, Hexacta won subsequent tenders for the construction of a DataMart to generate Business Intelligence reports related to Revolving Funds and various functional modules of the system: Budget Formulation Scenarios, Financial Planning, Administration Expense Management and Revolving Funds, Off-Budget Expenses, Management Reports, Check Payments, Account Management, Tax Item Management, Bank Reconciliation, etc.

The methodology initially adopted for the entire project was RUP (Rational Unified Process) but, after several iterations, Hexacta suggested the use of Scrum for agile management in the development teams. Interfaces were defined so that both methodologies could coexist efficiently.
This new organization ensured a proper management of Hexacta teams, facilitating coordination with the other teams in the project and achieving the objectives of each iteration, while maintaining an excellent relationship with the customer over the years