2025-07-30
The National Audit Office's findings raise serious questions about the EUR 100 million investment in centralising public sector IT services over the last decade. Although the main objective of the project, launched in 2015, was to optimise costs and save money for every taxpayer, the authorities responsible have not yet even assessed whether this EUR 100 million project is delivering financial efficiency at all. Not assessing the benefits is not only a risk of wasting money, but also a direct route to higher public spending, inefficiency and bloated bureaucracy. Moreover, such situations can discredit the very idea of centralisation as a means of increasing efficiency, undermining confidence in the State's ability to take and implement effective decisions.
Between 2015 and 2024, a process of consolidation of IT infrastructure was implemented with the support of the State budget and EU funding, with the aim of unifying IT management processes, optimising costs and saving public money. At the end of 2024, 263 public institutions had concluded centralised IT service contracts with the State Agency for Digital Solutions.
The National Audit Office notes that the authorities responsible for the implementation of the project do not assess whether the reduction in public expenditure on IT services has been achieved. The main indicator used to measure the success of the project - the number of users of consolidated IT services - is not sufficient to measure the real benefits.
"When investing EUR 100 million in systemic change, we must measure the real benefits for the country and citizens. Are we really saving taxpayers' money or are we just creating an illusion of efficiency? Today, there is no assessment of whether an investment of this magnitude has created an efficient system, which is a serious signal of weaknesses in public accountability and governance. If we do not assess the real impact, we risk not only wasting money, increasing costs, expanding bureaucracy, but also discrediting the very notion of centralisation as an optimisation strategy in the public sector. We must bear in mind that EU funding will run out in 2026, and it is likely that this project will have to continue to be financed entirely with public money. It is therefore necessary to assess now the current benefits, the actual need for IT services and the long-term impact of the investment", notes Auditor General Irena Segalovičienė.
The audit found that 12 percent of IT service users did not or hardly used the services provided centrally by the State Agency for Digital Solutions, and that due to a lack of IT specialists the Agency was not able to provide all the services needed by the public sector, so that some public sector bodies continue to take care of their own IT services, as they did before the consolidation process started. This duplicates functions and increases costs.
The National Audit Office made specific recommendations to the Ministry of Economy and Innovation, which is responsible for the centralisation of IT services. The most important of these is the immediate introduction of a system to measure the real savings of public money resulting from investments in infrastructure and centralised service provision. This is the only way to make informed decisions on the further financing of this project and to ensure that the centralisation process meets its original objectives of efficiency and savings.
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