One of the most important tools in the PMO IT Portfolio is Payment Factory. This tool is responsible for streamlining all of the financial transactions from no matter which dimension of the business they come from. Whether it be individual entitlements and salaries, missions, post-activity, sickness and accident, or budget and internal control, Payment Factory is responsible for centralising each of these financial flows together so that they can simply ‘communicate’ with the financial and accounting system of the Commission, ABAC (soon to be SUMMA).

The system continues to modernize with the accounting of payments in the Commission which are now fully automated.

A great evolution was achieved in recent months with the release of the front office, FiLIP. This simple and easy-to-use interface allows active and former staff of all EU Institutions and agencies to access your banking information and to modify it directly. The launch of FiLIP has been a great success with an average of 700 requests each month since the beginning of 2022. There has been a continuous improvement of error management and the interactive workflow of the interface to ensure it runs as smoothly as possible for the end user.

There are some big projects in the works for Payment Factory. The first is the integration with CZ (Centraal Zorgverzekeringen). CZ is the Dutch sickness insurance system, and this project aims to enable officials and pensioners living or working in the Netherlands to subscribe to this local system through JSIS Online. Payment Factory has the responsibility of managing each of the deductions from CZ for each beneficiary who decides to sign up.

Finally, one of the biggest developments on the horizon is the arrival of the SUMMA platform. SUMMA is DG BUDG’s new financial and accounting system which will replace ABAC. For all of the systems and applications for the Commission, this transition is due to take place from 1/1/2024. The Payment Factory team have been collaborating closely with DG BUDG and DIGIT to ensure a smooth integration for PMO’s IT systems. Recently, the first screens on SUMMA relating to data encoded in the system and the future channels of communication for all PMO applications have been released.