SLOVAKIA’s Financial Administration will have to decide whether it will return to its old information system, supplied by the Novitech company, or continue implementing its new KONS system since a representative of IBM [the new tax administration software provider] told a parliamentary oversight committee that it will not be possible to launch the UNITAS project, which is a plan to unify collection of taxes, custom duties and payroll levies, as originally scheduled on January 1, 2013, the SITA newswire reported.
“We learned from the sales manager of IBM today that it will not be possible from a procedural and organisational aspect due to the conditions in the Financial Administration,” said MP Jozef Kollár, the chair of the parliamentary oversight committee, on March 19 as quoted by SITA.
Kollár added that he believes the incoming parliament will need to modify some existing deadlines in the UNITAS project.
MP Anton Marcinčin, another member of the committee, was discouraged by the news about the UNITAS project.
“Somebody constructed a huge expensive tunnel between the old and new tax administration system which everybody was looking forward to,” the MP told SITA.
“We will wait until the steering committee decides after stress tests whether to proceed with some new deadlines and a new schedule of works on consolidation of the whole system so that IBM can supply the whole system by the end of 2012 or whether the old system will be restored, which I believe will inflict damage and then law enforcement authorities will have to decide,” stated MP Ondrej Matej, as quoted by SITA.
Outgoing Prime Minister Iveta Radičová told the media that the first results from an expert audit of the IT system prepared by professors from the Slovak University of Technology and Comenius University in Bratislava will be available soon.
