SUBMITTING ORGANISATION: COMPLEMENT CONTROL UNIT MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY SERVICES DIVISION (MCS) MINISTRY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE, OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, P.O. BOX 30050-00100 NAIROBI- KENYA NAME OF THE PROJECT: INTEGRATED PAYROLL AND PERSONNEL DATABASE (IPPD) INITIATIVE CONTACT PERSON: HENRY N. OGEGA (DIRECTOR), MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY SERVICES DIVISION (MCS) MINISTRY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE, OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, P.O. BOX 30050-00100 NAIROBI- KENYA TELEPHONE: 00254-20227411 TELEX: 00254-2023125 FAX: 00254-20243620 directormcs@dpm.go.ke NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES IN SUBMITTING ORGANISATION: 40
Impetus for Change By 1994, the Kenyan Civil Service had a complement of 240,000 staff deployed in around 35 Ministries/Departments. The Ministries/departments had staff ranging between 1000 and over 90,000 in the Office of the President, which was the largest Ministry. Most of these ministries/departments had field operations and large segment officers could be transferred from headquarters to the field offices and vice-versa. Such employee changes made it challenging to process and pay such officers since payroll administration was manually done. As such, such transfers greatly inconvenienced staff. The years 1994 and 1995 were characterised by intensive consultations in search of a more effective payroll administration system. The Integrated Payroll and Personnel Database (IPPD) initiative was mooted to help address the challenges of manual payroll administration. It is a computerized system conceived to replace the manual and semi-manual system, which was cumbersome, causing salary delays, inaccuracy in determining staffing levels and leading to poor accountability of funds. Before its inception, Government Ministries/ Departments used the Personnel Information Systems. IPPD embraced processes and procedures aimed at gathering, storing and processing information for effective and efficient decision making. Before inception of IPPD, it was difficult to establish personnel issues regarding Government employees like recruitment, training, postings, transfers, seniority lists, promotions and retirement. Moreover, timely determination of salary issues, enforcing statuary deductions, processing of request for loans, advances and ensuring their recovery was challenging. Even decisions on annual increments and leave processing were manually done. The systems used also lacked the basic personnel information such as Identity Card numbers, educational qualifications, full dates of appointments and birth. The Government Computer Services retrieved data through printouts, resulting in printing of bulky listings which were hardly used for the intended purpose. The result was submission of payroll data by Ministries/Departments to GCS using diskettes thus compromising data integrity besides not being cost effective. Before introduction of IPPD, HRM systems did not share data due to lack of appropriate network. Consequently, duplication of activities like data-gathering and entry took place, occasioning time loss, consistency, reliability of the services delivered. - 2 -
In addition, Ministries/Departments maintained personnel data by manual record cards and personal files. Much time was spent in data accessing and retrieving for decision making. Moreover, data lacked in-built data validation mechanism at the data capture centres. The processing of disciplinary matters and assessments of liabilities for calculation of pension and gratuity payments processing was more often characterised by delays. Owing to frequent delays service delivery, Government clients and employees had a feeling that things were processed in a tardy manner, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction, thereby affecting employees morale. Delays in payment of teachers salaries every month was a case in point. The situation was such that change was imminent. Purpose and Objectives of the Change The Introduction of the IPPD had the following objectives: to maintain accurate and consistent personnel data in the Public Service. In addition, IPPD was meant to bring about uniformity in the management of personnel records in the ministries/departments by capturing identity card numbers, educational qualifications, and full dates of appointments and dates of birth. to address the challenges in manual complement control, payroll, and personnel registries, skill Inventories and budgeting of Personal Emoluments posed by manual payroll administration and thereby do away with salary delays, promote accurate data capture on staffing levels. Create an efficient computer-based system for gathering, storing and processing information for management decision making in such aspects as recruitment, training, postings, transfers, seniority lists, promotions and retirements, salary related issues, enforcing statutory deductions, processing of request for loans, advances and ensuring their recovery. To minimise wastage that used to be incurred through bulky printing of paper whenever a personnel related query was raised. Make it possible to use data for purposes of expediting decision making on such matters as discipline, assessments of liabilities for calculation of pension and processing and payment of gratuities. - 3 -
The Innovation itself The IPPD system was designed in 1996/97 by the Kenyan Government officers from the Ministry of State for Public Service and other departments. It was prototyped and tested in seven pilot sites (Ministries/departments) in 1997/98, including user training in basic computer skills. System testing was accomplished using the trained staff and the IPPD prototype to capture the 1997/98 headcount data in their respective ministries/departments. The IPPD was found to be workable and thereafter extended to all other Government establishments. How IPPD was implemented The development and implementation of IPPD started when Ministry of State for Public Service formed a synergy with the Government Computer Services (GCS). This involved the implementation of the IPPD system prototype on the new IBM mainframe computers at the GCS. This guaranteed the necessary data processing speeds to support all ministries/departments. This was followed by the installation of IPPD computers and programmes in the ministries/departments and the LAN. Thirdly, high speed Wide Area Network (WAN) for remote data access between the GCS and all ministries/departments was set up. With this in place, training of systems analysts on network administration and maintenance started in earnest. The implementation of IPPD included development of comprehensive training manual by the then Directorate of Personnel Management (now Ministry of Sate for Public Service) to enable Ministries /Departments implement it. The training manual was instrumental in familiarizing the Civil Servants with the processes entailed in IPPD system, imparting thorough knowledge of the initiative to the users and building capacity in the use of IPPD system to a level where the users can work independently. After acquiring the relevant skills, conversion and cleansing of personnel data from all relevant sources began. These sources included the 1997/98 headcount data, ministries/departments payrolls and paper-based records in the ministries/departments. The process was finalized with the printing of the IPPD system documentation, which included the user manuals, technical manuals; training manuals, trainer s guides and data capture Instruments. With these instruments in place, the initiative was extended to users by training them on how to use the IPPD system. The users include managers and - 4 -
operators in all ministries/departments. To sustain the initiative, a Technical Support Unit was set up to help the users when necessary. The main stakeholders in IPPD are Government Ministries/ departments, Local authorities, Teachers Service Commission (TSC), etc. Other stakeholders include insurance and hire purchase companies, commercial banks, Kenya Revenue Authority and cooperative and credit societies, which have benefited due efficient means of effecting salary deductions through IPPD. The initiative required the following resources: - 5 -
(i) Financial Resources The IPPD started in a small way without a specific expenditure vote head. It arose out of efforts to contain a huge wage bill, cleanse payroll, validate payroll data, and stream line payroll administration processes involving approximately 186,000 officers in the Civil Service. At this stage, funds for training and purchase of stationery were re-allocated from various vote-heads, among them, the vote for capacity building under the Voluntary Early Retirement Scheme (VERS). Increasingly, expenditure was required for purchase of computers, purchase of stationery, and training of staff in order to sustain the momentum, which IPPD was acquiring. By 2003/04 Financial Year, the need was therefore felt to create a Vote Head under Treasury to cater for IPPD. Later, in the subsequent Financial Years, i.e. 2004/05, 2005/06 the allocation was enhanced. Relevant details are reflected below: Expenditure on IPPD Project Financial Year 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 Cumulative Kenya Shillings 9,012,357.90 13,278,200.15 5,077,283.50 39,832,267.65 149,853,879 (ii) Technical Resources-The technical resources comprise of computers, accessories, hardware and software, which were required for the initiative. (iii) Human Resources-ICT personnel, HRM officers from ministries headquarters, provincial and district offices of respective ministries, complement control specialists from Management Consultancy Services Division (MCS) and the wider Public Service. Results Achieved to Date Provision of accurate, timely and reliable personnel information for decision making thus enhancing efficiency and performance, which has further led to improvement in: Speedy data generation and processing, reducing much paper culling contrary to the pre-ippd days. Efficient retrieval and management of personnel information Storage of modern computers takes less space than personnel information in paper files. - 6 -
The Security of storing records is more assured under IPPD system. The risk of destroying or distorting information, which was a common feature in the manual system, is minimised under IPPD. Report generation is automatic and less prone to errors and IPPD ensures synchronisation of data at any particular time, so that complement control statistics will be the same as those in the payroll and personal emoluments budget reports. Outlook for the Future The initiative is under the Ministry of State for Public Service, which is charged with the responsibility of overseeing its implementation and ensuring that the system is installed and running in every ministry/department. This continuity of the initiative is assured by carrying out the following activities to ensure sustainability; First, Ministry of State for Public Service has overseen the acquisition of all the hardware required to run the initiative (IPPD system). In addition, the Ministry of State for Public Service has acquired the appropriate software such as Windows, Clarion, DB2 UDB which the new initiative (IPPD system) for operation and maintenance. Thirdly, it provided training of the IPPD system users (in Ministries and Departments) and the technical support staff. The initiative has been transferred to other users like Teachers service commission, Local authority and other Government agencies. In brief, the Ministry of State for Public Service is the custodian of the data held within the new initiative (IPPD system) for the entire Civil Service. The initiative has high chances of being transferred as well as being sustainable within the public and private sector management. The initiative has very bright prospects of sustainability because of its past successes and constant evaluation to ensure future success. Potential Implications for other Organisations IPPD is easy to apply and generates accurate and timely data; hence, Ministries / Departments and other Semi-Autonomous Government agencies have embraced it. It has the capacity to save ministries/departments time, which in turn is used in other strategic areas. Introducing IT-based tools in Human Resource Management anticipates that the organization is able to change and that management has decided that IT-tools are to support the vision and the strategies that have been outlined for solving the HRM tasks. - 7 -
IPPD therefore becomes not only an innovation, but also work improvement strategy that has become one of the hallmarks of efficiency in the Public Service. Executive Summary Innovations enhance productivity by removing cumbersome manual processes in organisations. This situation obtained in Kenyan Public Service around 1994 after introduction of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Database (IPPD), a system that replaced the manual data-management system. The benefits, challenges and prospects of IPPD are the focus of this paper. Signature Date: - 8 -