The Court of Audit of the Republic of Slovenia implemented performance audit of the Blood Transfusion Centre of Slovenia concerning efficiency of setting up new unified transfusion IT system and effectiveness of this project implementation in the period from 1 January 2009 to 30 April 2016.
The Court of Audit expressed an opinion that the Transfusion Centre was efficient in setting up new unified transfusion IT system, namely in defining its functional and technical demands, in carrying out the procedures of public procurement and in drafting and concluding a contract protecting its interests. Nevertheless, the Court of Audit assessed that the Transfusion Centre was ineffective in project implementation related to setting up unified transfusion IT system.
In the first phase of project implementation the Transfusion Centre carried out comparison of functional and technical demands presented in the public tender and actual functionalities of the selected IT solution, concluding that the selected IT solution did not meet an important but in number rather small part of the public procurement requirements, however, this was not evident from the selected bid. The selected IT solution did not appropriately support an important area, i.e. laboratories services. The Transfusion Centre tried to solve discrepancies in the selected IT solution with the tender, but the method of setting up the IT support for laboratories was not clarified at the end of the period covered by the audit.
The Transfusion Centre followed some best practices when implementing the project, nevertheless it failed to be consistent. In a part of the period covered by the audit some key stakeholders in the field of blood supply in the Republic of Slovenia were not involved in the project. At the end of the period covered by the audit the Transfusion Centre did not formally define basic aspects of future project implementation regarding setting up unified transfusion IT system, among others it failed to unambiguously define agreement on setting up IT system at other stakeholders in the field of blood supply.
The Transfusion Centre had complete overview of the funds used for the project. Up to the end of the period covered by the audit the selected tender was paid less than 8 percent of contractual value of the project and the payments related only to services provided.
The project was in delay for several years at the end of the period covered by the audit, but at that point of time the Transfusion Centre lacked developed and updated timetable for finalising the project. In April 2017, it adopted the updated plan to complete upgrading of the project, therefore the Court of Audit did notdemand from the Transfusion Centre to submit a response report, but it issued several recommendations for the improvement of operations.
