The Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture (ARiMR) was created in 1994 in order to support the development of agriculture and rural areas. ARiMR was appointed by the Government of the Republic of Poland to play a role of an accredited paying agency. It deals with implementation of instruments co-financed by the EU budget and grants aid using national financial resources. The Agency, as a performer of agricultural policy, closely cooperates with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. ARiMR is at the same time subject to the supervision of the Ministry of Finances within the scope of managing public funds. The main beneficiaries of activities carried out by ARiMR are farmers, rural areas dwellers, entrepreneurs and local self-governments. ARiMR grants aid also to entities of the fishing sector.
After Poland joined the European Union, it was necessary to implement an Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) for direct farming subsidies. One of the biggest challenges within the framework of IACS was getting reference data from the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate (GIS), such as boarders of parcels, areas not subject to subsidies and orthophotos. This data comprised the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) which finally covered an area of over 98% of the area of Poland. Most of the data gained by the Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture (ARiMR) in order to create LPIS was subject to quality control carried out within the framework of the Contract, additionally, the Contractor processed the gained data and imported it to IACS databases.
According to the guidelines of the EU the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) serving for execution of direct payments for farmers should work on the basis of correct data on reference area (parcels), areas not covered by subsidies and orthophotos. As the range of data is huge – 98% of Poland’s area – this task was contracted out to many contractors. As the companies lacked experience in such complex works and as the scale of the project is huge the low quality of work of those outer contractors, and as a result lack of conformity with Technical Conditions defined by ARiMR were identified as potential risk. A high conformity with standards defined in Technical Conditions was necessary not only because of the contents of the data but also because of a possibility to import the data to IACS in a way enabling proper functioning.
Within the scope of the project, the Control Service and the Service of Processing and Verification are included.
The main task performed within the frameworks of the Control Service was ensuring high quality of products delivered by Outer Contractors. Within the frameworks of Control Services, a wide range of activities were carried out. These activities were to guarantee a high quality of the products. All products delivered by the Outer Contractors covering the full range of areas for each Contractor were subject to control. The controls were carried out from the point of view of evaluating their conformity with the standards – automatic controls, and content correctness as well as coherence of the study – visual controls. Additionally, within the frameworks of the Control Services, works were carried out on facilitating the performance of the project, e.g. meetings with the Contractors, preparation of explanations to the Technical Conditions, answers to questions of Contractors.
The second part of the undertaking was to prepare software of the GIS class serving for supporting of data gaining and updating, spatially oriented in IACS. All levels which have been previously controlled have been processed and imported to IACS. The processed and imported data covered an area of over 307 thousand square meters (full spatial data in IACS).
Benefits
Owing to the execution of the project, a coherent database of geographical data was created. It covers over 98% of the area of Poland and is comprised of boarders, orthophotos and areas not subject to subsidies. The created data was imported to the ZSZiK system and serves for a basis to control the applications for direct subsidies. Due to the database, the Ordering Party fulfilled one of the most important conditions of correct execution of direct subsidies which enabled fulfilling a role of the Paying Agency defined by the Act and payment of billions of zlotys to individual farmers.
