The FBRK editorial team continues to analyse the largest government procurements of Kazakh departments in 2024.
In our previous article, we covered the expensive procurements of the Ministry of Justice, where forensic examination was the clear funding leader – around 14.8 billion tenge, and this only taking into account the largest contracts.
Today we will look at the procurements of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA).
The Ministry of Internal Affairs is a state body responsible for ensuring public safety, protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens, maintaining law and order, and fighting crime. The MIA organises police work, prevents and solves crimes, controls road safety, registers vehicles, ensures fire safety, and responds to emergency situations.
In addition, the MIA plays a key role in migration policy: it issues passports, identity cards, migration cards, residence permits and other documents, and regulates the entry, stay and exit of foreign nationals. The ministry also oversees the enforcement of administrative and criminal penalties, including the work of the penal system institutions.
An analysis of the MIA's largest procurements in 2024 has revealed interesting trends in the distribution of budget funds. The clear leader in funding turned out to be the production of identity documents for citizens. The MIA allocated three large tranches for the production of passports: 7.23 billion tenge, 4.7 billion tenge and 216.26 million tenge (although under the last contract, only 193.45 million tenge was actually paid). In total, around 12.14 billion tenge was spent on passports. A further 5.33 billion tenge was allocated for the production of identity cards, and 364.6 million tenge for the production of residence permits. All these orders were carried out by the same enterprise – the RSE on REM "Information Production Centre" of the MIA of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Thus, on the production of identity documents alone, the ministry spent around 17.84 billion tenge – an absolute majority among the analysed large procurements.
The second area of funding is information technology and digitalisation. Last year, the MIA purchased hardware and system software for the information complex of operational, service and analytical activities worth 581.7 million tenge. Another 556 million tenge was spent on hardware and system software for the Migration Police information system, and 445.76 million tenge was allocated for the development and implementation of the system itself.
Continuing the modernisation of its technical fleet, the MIA purchased 975 computers in a bundle for 506.9 million tenge and 454 laptops for 212.12 million tenge. Almost 396.65 million tenge was allocated for corporate data network, email and telephone channel services.
The vehicle fleet also saw an update: the ministry purchased 46 class B passenger cars with manual transmission and engine capacity up to 2000 cc for a total of 695.52 million tenge.
The analysis shows that two key spending priorities are clearly evident in the MIA: providing citizens with documents and the digitalisation of the ministry's own activities. The total amount of the largest procurements presented in our review exceeds 20.5 billion tenge.
It is telling that the lion's share of funding goes towards the production of identity documents. At the same time, all these funds are received by a subordinate organisation – the "Information Production Centre" of the MIA of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In effect, we are witnessing a significant amount of intra-departmental redistribution of budget funds, which raises questions about the transparency of pricing for these services and the efficiency of budget fund usage.
The second important conclusion is the significant investment in digitalisation. In total, the MIA allocated around 2.7 billion tenge for information systems, software and computer equipment, and this is only considering the largest contracts. This distribution indicates a serious technological upgrade within the ministry, which could potentially improve its operational efficiency. However, the question of the value for money of the equipment and software purchased, and how exactly these investments will affect the quality of services for citizens, remains open.
Overall, the structure of the MIA's large procurements reflects the global trend towards the digitalisation of state bodies, but the lack of transparency in intra-departmental financial flows requires closer public scrutiny and an assessment of the efficiency of budget expenditure. Particularly interesting is the fact that almost 18 billion tenge returns to the MIA system through its own subordinate organisation, creating the appearance of a closed financial cycle that may be difficult to control.
To be continued...