Constitutionally, the Ministry of Finance has authority over all financing aspects of the government. The bookkeepers throughout the federal government ministries and other spending units are all essentially employees of the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance has the authority to define the roles and responsibilities of these individuals. Moreover, by law, the Ministry of Finance, together with the federal audit office, is responsible for the uniform organization of all of the government accounting units and the governmentwide accounting IT system. The Ministry of Finance does not have authority over the organization and operational functions of the other ministries. Therefore, the Ministry of Finance has no control over IT spending and the types of solutions chosen. So, while the Ministry of Finance has the legal authority to require that all the other ministries provide the same quantity and quality of data to the Ministry of Finance for accounting and budgeting purposes and use a specific IT solution for the reporting function, it cannot dictate the internal processes or workflow of collecting, maintaining, and providing the data. According to Christian Ihle, “From the Ministry of Finance, I could mandate the software and the rules for the accounting system, but not for the internal workflows and processes. They could run the process in a very difficult and complex way. They could leave the electronic process in their organizational process as they have in the past.”