We Help the State Improve Management of Minimum Aid Applications during the Corona crisis

In current very difficult situation when the whole country fights the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Slovak citizens more than ever appreciates immediate state financial aid within its support schemes. Management of financial aid schemes is not a trivial mechanism and requires support of an information system.

We developed such a system called “Information system for registration and monitoring of assistance (IS SEMP)” in 2014 for the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic. Currently, the entire agenda is managed by the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic. Thanks to the IS SEMP, individual state administration bodies as well as public have the tools necessary for provision of state aid.

Since the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic is an aid coordinator according to law, the work with the IS SEMP information system is an integral part of its employees´ everyday agenda. Since the solution fully supports digital transformation, processing minimum aid requests is now much more effective.

IS SEMP serves as a central register according to the State aid law. It contains data on provided state aid and minimum aid in the Slovak Republic. Besides the aid coordinators, the access to the system was given also to aid providers, or scheme administrators and public.

User and functional development of the IS SEMP solution has brought:

• reduced administrative load of the Antimonopoly Office´s employees;
• an ability to perform corrections, deactivate or cancel minimum aid cases for the minimum aid providers in the SEMP Secure portal;
• update of formulas for calculation the financial ceiling according to the current conditions and laws;
• regular updates of the financial ceilings for organizations.

Thanks to the delivered solution, the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic is in compliance with the legislative requirements imposed by the European Union regulation, according which a state has been obligated to administer the register of state aid and minimum aid and make the information from the register available to the public via Internet since 2016.

Employees of the Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (OLSAaF) had to manually enter more than 1000 records containing beneficiaries and individual aid grants into their own information system each month. They were also obliged to register these data into the IS SEMP provided by MF SR.

• MF SR decided to interconnect IS SEMP with IS CARD in order to reduce OLSAaF employees´ workload related to duplicated data entry into two different systems and at the same time increase quality and data availability.

• IS CARD, as a central communication point of public administration, is integrated across the other state information systems. Thanks to the system integration, all data input to the system used by OLSAaF are now automatically saved in the IS SEMP as well.
• The solution contributes to high data quality, its consolidation, and contextual interconnection. It also reduced OLSAaF employee’s workload by elimination of duplicated data entry.

IS SEMP is a comprehensive solution for registration and monitoring De minimis aid and State aid. Implemented solution brings information about provided aid to the public via a web portal. Owing to that, persons involved are informed about the process of aid approval in real time. The solution at the same time increases efficiency of control mechanisms over the whole process.

By the implementation of the information system we have ensure, among other things, the following:

• reduced error rate in statements concerning use of aid;
• more effective work of state employees;
• automation of some manual activities (e.g., monitoring De minimis aid ceiling and its manual processing);

• saving costs related to processing aid applications;
• a comprehensive overview of provided aid and activities thanks to the reporting;
• migration of existing data into the newly developed SEMP system and its integration with other systems.

Our system allows MF SR to meet legislative requirements, since each member state has been, according to the European Union directive, obliged to administer the register of State aid and publish the information for the public on the Internet. We delivered the project in March 2014.