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30 June 2026
In June 2026, the Value for Money Division at the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic celebrates its tenth anniversary. To mark the occasion, we looked back and selected ten milestones that have shaped not only the Division itself, but also public decision-making in Slovakia.
At the Value for Money Division, our mission is to bring evidence, analytical rigour, and a focus on outcomes to government decision-making. We assess whether taxpayers’ money is being used to achieve the best possible results. Through expert analysis, we support ministers and the government in making better-informed policies and spending decisions. What milestones have shaped us along the way?
We consider the introduction of value for money principles into public administration as the first major milestone. It all began with the study “The Best of All Possible Worlds”. The initiative was supported by a broad group of experts, and thanks to backing from the Ministry of Finance at the time, the project was approved. In the early stages, the key activity was spending reviews.
The establishment of the Value for Money Division was not an isolated step, but part of a broader effort to shift public administration towards greater use of data and analysis. In parallel, analytical capacities were also being developed within other ministries. This was supported by three EU-funded projects focused on building analytical capacity, including training. A methodology for the development of analytical units was created, followed by a gradually expanding network of such units. Cooperation and coordination among these units continue to this day.
One of the Value for Money Division’s first major steps was the introduction of spending reviews. Spending reviews are a standard tool in OECD countries, allowing governments to regularly “clean up” their expenditures and policies. In 2016, shortly after the Division was established, pilot reviews were launched in the areas of healthcare, transport, and digital transformation. At the same time, a methodology was developed setting out how such reviews should be conducted. Over the past ten years, we have prepared and published 24 spending reviews. The pilot phase was also supported by the Institute for Financial Policy.
Since 2020, spending reviews have been anchored in law and must be carried out regularly. Their nature has also gradually evolved, from broad sector-wide analyses, such as the review of overall healthcare spending, towards more detailed topics, including hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and outpatient care.
An important milestone was also the shift from analysis to implementation; that is, translating spending review recommendations into concrete legislative and policy measures. In education, it was possible to link teacher salary increases with the implementation of measures from the spending review. We also contributed to the introduction of a fairer system of regional teacher compensation. At the same time, a more transparent and fair funding model for primary and secondary schools was introduced, alongside steps to improve quality and outcomes through school network optimisation.
The Spending Review on the prison system led to a gradual increase in the number of probation and mediation officers, as well as a legislative change transferring selected competencies from judges to these officers. In practice, this has made it easier to impose alternative sentences.
Several successes have also been achieved in healthcare, described in more detail in point 9.
Another major milestone for our work was the Government resolution of June 2017, which introduced systematic evaluation of investment projects. A structured comparison of costs, benefits, and alternatives was incorporated into project preparation. Studies began to follow a unified methodology and are assessed by the Value for Money Division after completion and publication.
This approach is also anchored in legislation, with an obligation applying to projects above €10 million in the IT sector and above €40 million in other areas.
The assessments provide managers and policymakers with recommendations for improving projects. They deliver the greatest added value at the early stages, when potential issues can still be identified in time, and the project can be adjusted without major complications. While not binding, the publication of Division’s opinion contributes to greater transparency and public debate. To date, we have published 225 assessments of major projects, along with several dozen updates.
The Value for Money Division, together with other analytical units and line ministries, contributed to the development of one of the most important strategic documents of recent years. The Recovery and Resilience Plan provided Slovakia with the opportunity to use more than €6 billion for reforms and investments aimed at improving education, healthcare, and digital transformation.
The direction of the reforms was set by the Ministry of Finance discussion paper Modern and Successful Slovakia, which built on a range of proposals we had previously worked on. Through the Recovery and Resilience Plan, these proposals were translated into concrete policy measures.
The Plan demonstrated that analytical work can have a real impact on major state decisions, and that when well-designed solutions are prepared in advance, the state is able to implement them when the opportunity arises.
A key area of impact has been translating analytical findings and recommendations into government decisions. Some of our proposals aimed at improving the efficiency of the state’s day-to-day operations were adopted as principles guiding ministries and public institutions. For example, ministries should adopt best practice in insuring state-owned assets. The government also proposed adjustments to its energy procurement processes based on our analysis.
We also launched a systematic evaluation of contracts for the operation of IT systems (so-called SLA contracts). The results are now directly reflected in practice: a more efficient setup of contractual terms in new and ongoing contracts has already delivered part of the expected savings.
For ten years, we have been focusing on the everyday functioning of the state. We have also addressed public sector remuneration and staffing structures, analysed spending on office rental costs, assessed the effectiveness of various subsidies, and raised the issue of disguised self-employment.
In transport, we have also helped improve the planning and decision-making of major investments. Together with the Ministry of Transport, we prepared the documents Priorities in the Development of Road Infrastructure and Priorities in the Development of Railway Infrastructure, followed by a concrete construction timeline. These allow for a more substantive public debate on which projects should take priority over others, and why.
In project assessments, tangible savings have been achieved. Following consultations with the National Motorway Company, alternative designs for the R8 motorway were considered that were €300–600 million cheaper than the original proposal. For the D3 motorway, our data supported a lower cost estimate entering public procurement, which was subsequently confirmed by the tender results.
We also contributed to the development of the Transport Service Plan and its implementation through a new train timetable. This introduced more trains at regular intervals, attracted more passengers, increased revenues, and improved efficiency, as the state can provide more transport for comparable costs. We have also sought to improve the efficiency of rail transport through audits of Railway Company Slovakia (ZSSK) and Railways of the Slovak Republic (ŽSR), and through new operating contracts between the state and railway companies. Attention has also been drawn to important issues such as the condition of bridges in Slovakia, which has been widely discussed since the publication of a blog post in 2024. In addition to identifying the problem, we proposed and quantified scenarios for faster reconstruction.
One of the more recent milestones is the development of a national transport model, AMDY, in cooperation with the Institute for Transport Policy. This new analytical tool simulates passenger and freight transport from origin to destination, covering mode choice and route optimisation. The model allows for simulations of demographic and mobility changes, the creation of new jobs, and the development of new or upgraded infrastructure. It includes long-term forecasts up to 2050. Its aim is to unify transport analysis, improve transport forecasting, and support infrastructure investment planning through feasibility studies, economic assessments, and project prioritisation. The model has been adopted by analysts, academics, and project designers, and is now used in the preparation of several ongoing road and railway projects.
Even in a complex sector such as healthcare, we have demonstrated that it is possible to move towards fairer rules and better use of public resources. Transparency in hospital financing has significantly improved. Thanks to a standardised methodology and published data, it is now possible to compare how individual hospitals are funded. At the same time, consolidated versions of contracts between hospitals and health insurers were introduced, replacing outdated agreements and dozens of amendments.
There has also been a major shift in budgeting expenditures by type of care. Instead of a single aggregate figure, a breakdown is now available showing how much is allocated, for example, to medicines, outpatient care, and inpatient care. Based on our proposals, the Ministry of Health began introducing an impact assessment clause for the reimbursement listing process for individual medicines, which should help address long-standing overspending on pharmaceuticals.
Our analytical work also helped reduce repeated switching between health insurance companies among people from the poorest communities. We also identified cartel behaviour among medical laboratories, which was later confirmed by the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic, resulting in a fine.
At the beginning, the Value for Money Division drew heavily on international experience, particularly from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which helped design the first spending reviews. What we initially learned from others, we are now passing on ourselves. Our approaches and results in spending reviews and assessments of investment projects have gradually become recognised as examples of good practice, referenced by international partners such as the European Commission, the OECD, and the IMF.
In addition, we regularly present our work at international forums, including World Bank seminars, OECD working groups, IMF missions, and United Nations Development Programme projects in various countries. We have also shared our experience in building analytical units in the Czech Republic and, in 2025, for the first time at a major economic event, the Arab Fiscal Forum in Dubai.
We believe that in the next ten years as well, we will continue to have the opportunity to contribute to a better Slovakia through systematic analytical work.
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