The technology architecture for the future of public finance

Expectations of public finance systems are always evolving. While technology has always played a big role in meeting these expectations, it has proven difficult for governments to keep up to date. Often our technologies for financial management are addressing yesterday's expectations rather than today’s, let alone being adaptable to tomorrow’s. That’s a problem in a rapidly changing and volatile world where governments and public finance systems are expected to be more flexible and responsive to emerging challenges.

Although there is an emerging consensus that our technology architecture for financial management needs to be more adaptable to these changing needs and expectations, there is uncertainty about how to achieve this in practice. Governments struggle to understand the technology options available to them, and how they fit together. As a result, they are often biased towards particular solutions and suppliers, rather than using their buying power to shape the market they need. This constrains the ability of government to continuously improve and adapt the financial management services it provides.

This roundtable will bring together leaders from government, the software industry, international organisations and other experts to consider the following questions:

- What are the possible technology architectures for the future of government financial management?

- What are the software options available right now for building that architecture?

- And, where (and how) do we need to provide more direction to the market on what is needed?

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