INTEGRATED PAYROLL AND PERSONNEL DATABASE
Ministry of State For Public Service
Kenya

The Problem

INTEGRATED PAYROLL AND PERSONNEL DATABASE- (IPPD)
Overview
An in-house developed automated and computer based data management system that integrates payroll and personnel data for the entire civil service workforce, including the Teachers Service Commission. A radical departure from slow, erratic, disjointed manual methods that had been in use previously. It integrates four functional components; Complement Control, Payroll Administration, Budget, Education and Skills Inventory. Notable gains include accuracy, timeliness, elimination of staff fatigue, querry features and generation of by products, and safeguarding of funds leaked through fraudulent manipulation of the payroll.
The Problem
The civil service payroll in Kenya maintains a workforce that has varied at the highest in 1994 when it reached 250,000; and 187,000 in recent years. Until 1995, Payroll administration was by manual means i.e. where CARDEX and registers were used and all entries and amendments were done by hand. Range of activities included introducing, updating of Bio data of civil servants to also reflect transfers, promotions, change of marital status, new qualifications, job titles, and age, among numerous other data. All the necessary calculations were done by pen and calculators. This system was replicated in all the Ministries and controlled centrally from the Ministry of State for Public Service.
Serious drawbacks of the system were, fatigue due to workload, inaccurate entries, delayed entries, backlogs, late payment of salaries, allowances, misplaced files and data sources, and deliberate abuse. The system was highly prone to the phenomenon of ‘ghost’ workers which in essence looted the payroll of vast amounts of money monthly, greatly bloating the budget.
Rigidity of the system hampered ability to make crucial policy decisions relating to Human Resource Management (HRM), Human Resource Development (HRD), and development of new programmes and strategies. Initiatives such as gender mainstreaming, disability mainstreaming, affirmative action, staff insurance schemes, pension scheme and Human Resource Planning (HRP) were prioritized government policies but proved unfeasible in the unpredictable data environment.
The above paint a lose-lose- lose picture for three categories of stakeholders. Civil Servants lose due to delayed facilitation; government loses due to leakage of funds and diminished capacity for policy formulation and implementation; and the citizenry loses due to low capacity to deliver services.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
Key Benefits
The solution to the problem was automation and integration of the four functional components of Complement Control, Payroll Administration, Budget, Education and Skills Inventory. Complement Control enables determination of establishment requirements for various cadres in the civil service and matching of positions with incumbent employees thereby highlighting over-establishment and vacancies. Storage, processing and retrieval of personnel information for supporting four functional units namely complement control management, personnel remuneration management, annual budget estimates for personal emoluments and HRD and Planning. Prior to IPPD the functions were performed in isolation and independent of each other with resultant data redundancy, duplication and inconsistency. There is now efficiency and enhanced performance, emanating from the flexibility of the IPPD tool. Due to central storage there is information sharing which enhances accurate and consistent decision making. Updating of information is done promptly and is checked.
IPPD has controls that ensure that employees draw salaries from the correct vote, sub-vote, head, and sub-head. Data capture in on-line and is timely, minimizing budget distortions due to arrears payments.
IPPD totally transformed payroll administration, ushered unprecedented methods of work, streamlined procedures and processes, and gave staff a new sense of dignity and professionalism. From a technical perspective, it automated data management, brought immense storage capacity, did away with complex manual calculations, tedious search for documents, dusty registries, torn files and overloaded registry shelves. This proved to be a great relief to the HR registry Personnel who could then work in a more dignified environment, minus the fatigue, confusion, and allergy inducing dust. A key measurement in this respect is that all Ministries in the Civil Service adopted the system which covered all the employees within a period of five years.
This 100% adoption was a major boost to Ministry of Finance since budgeting for HR became easier, faster, more accurate, and predictable. Also massive loss of funds due to ‘ghost’ workers was curtailed. By and large, all the starting objectives of IPPD have been met. These were modernization of data management, greater control of processes, timely and accurate data, elimination of abuse and enhancement of payroll integrity, and capacity to generate regular and special by products for decision making. Qualitative measures of impact have also been expressed in work shops, conferences, employee satisfaction surveys, and general work place morale.
Benefits for the Ministry of State for Public Service came in the form of timely, accurate payment of salaries, updating of staff bio-data improved capacity for HRP, and generation of by products for policy formulation. As a result of improved data management under IPPD, initiatives of gender mainstreaming, disability mainstreaming, affirmative action, HIV/AIDS mitigation, and District Based Recruitment policy, have enjoyed high levels of implementation that could not have been possible without IPPD system.
Benefits for staff manifests in the ease with which deductions can be made in respect to SACCO membership, bank loans, Higher Purchase, and ability to work and get salary in different centres. Cases of erroneous deductions which stressed workers have drastically reduced.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Who Proposed Solution, Implementers and Stakeholders
Proposal of IPPD as a solution evolved out of lessons, feed-back, consultations, proposals and conferences. Salient issues were then formed as policy proposal between the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of State for Public Service (MSPS), and the Permanent Secretary, Secretary to the Cabinet, and Head of Public Service.
Once Cabinet approved the initiative, responsibility for implementation rested with Permanent Secretary (MSPS).
Operational responsibility was delegated to the Director, Management Consultancy Services Department. The technical team responsible for design, software development, choice of ‘hardware’, bulk data entry, development of technical manuals, development of training modules, piloting, and roll-out was done by the head of section in charge of the IPPD project.
The key stakeholders of the IPPD project are civil servants, Commercial Banks, SACCO, Societies, Hire Purchase Companies, insurance companies, pensioners, potential job seekers, training institutions, and computer hardware vendors.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
Strategies, Main Objectives, and Role Players
IPPD was adopted as a policy initiative of Government by Cabinet in 1995. Key players within its institutional framework comprised National Steering Committee of the Civil Service Reform Programme, Ministry of State for Public Service, Ministry of Finance, Ministerial Civil Service Reform Committees, Provincial and District Reform Committees, Technical Support Unit, Payroll staff, and Complement Control Staff.
It is the responsibility of MSPS to issue pay guidelines and manage the civil service payroll. Policies relating to payroll also emanate from Ministry of Finance through Treasury circulars which advise on preparation of estimates of personal emoluments, supplementary estimates, printed estimates, and Treasury ceilings. Accurate and timely data is crucial to these roles.

The Ministry of State for Public Service refined objectives within a framework which included modernization of data management in order to gain efficiencies and mitigate risks that management of a huge payroll system entail. In particular data integrity of a prime concern. IPPD has an in-built data validation mechanism (formulae that ease data entry) to minimize data entry errors thus enhancing data credibility. This also eliminates replication of personal numbers in the pay roll, hence minimizing “ghost” payments. Standard codes which ensure uniformity across the civil service. It was envisaged that there would be gains in efficiency, timeliness, accuracy, data reliability, staff morale, and customer satisfaction. The system was to be designed in-house in order to answer to complex and specific needs of the Civil Service.
The overall IPPD strategy comprised in-house design of a software to integrate payroll and personnel data. This was intended to factor salary levels and increments, and budgeting on one hand; and changes in personnel data i.e. station of deployment, job title and grade, age, among other relevant bio-data and payment data.
System hardware was locally sourced and installed by civil servants in respective Ministries, but with the technical support of the IPPD section of the Ministry of State for Public Service. A new cadre of Information Communication Technology (ICT) officers was introduced and officers posted to all Ministries to provide system support.
As a complement to the new cadre, HR officers were also trained to be familiar with running of the system. Training was based on technical manuals and curriculum developed by the IPPD project team of the Ministry of State for Public Service.
Ministry of Finance made special allocations of funds towards the project; but the recurrent votes of respective Ministries also played an important supplementary role.
A careful study of user needs and weaknesses of the manual system helped to lay the foundation for software design and refinement. A most challenging phase after this was entry or keying in of bulk data from manual records. ICT officers and HR Officers teamed up to undertake this phase with guidance of the IPPD project team.

Another aspect of the implementation strategy was pre-testing or piloting the system and making necessary adjustments before roll out to all the Ministries.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Key Developments, Implementation Steps, and Chronology

(a) The key developments and implementation steps have a chronology with overlapping initiatives where boundaries are not clear in most instances, and many of the initiatives run in parallel. The period prior to 1995 was to be viewed as the phase for drawing lessons from the old system, exploring policy and strategic options. 1995 marks the point of policy review. Subsequently, proof of IPPD as a viable project attracted some funding from the World Bank to supplement government resources. Installation of an effective server in MSPS and high speed computers in Ministries was intensified in the period 2001 to 2005. A training and operation manual was developed in the same period to aid development of practical skills and enable operationalization in Ministries in a phased fashion.

Important feature of technical development include access data format, stand alone arrangement to await service wide connectivity at a later date, safeguard arrangements to check fraud, unique employee numbers to weed out “ghost” workers, data back-up, restricted access to unauthorized persons, spy-ware for supervision and control, and automation of issues such as leave and regular deductions or updates.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
(b) Main Obstacles
Generally, good planning on inception pre-empted many of the problems that a project of the magnitude of IPPD was bound to encounter, but this did not completely rule out a number of challenges .
Adoption of IPPD as a policy priority was a triumph. One of the foremost challenges was to design a software that is responsive to the complexity and scope of the Civil Service. This was overcome by identifying a highly skilled officer who provided technical leadership. To date, IPPD has not fallen short in terms of technical capacity or design capability.
Full fledged inter-connectivity and intra-connectivity still remain a challenge and hampers attainment of real-time capability. This is an extraneous issue to the IPPD project.
At the time IPPD was being introduced there was a “computer phobia” across the service. This called for a change in mind-sets so that the raw system is embraced. Introduction of the cadre of ICT officers, establishment of the e-Government Secretariat, and the technical manual for IPPD, contributed a lot to changing perceptions.
There were cases of resistance which were dealt with by ultimatum: “IPPD has to be adopted by this month and date; or else …..there will be no payment of salaries!”
Entry of bulk payroll data in the biggest ministries like Ministry of Health, and Provincial Administration was a daunting undertaking. Work was accomplished by setting up special work teams and setting strict deadlines.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
(c) Resources
Key resources for conceptualization and implementation of IPPD were software design skills, funds, hardware, office space, ICT personnel, and HR personnel.
Government used computer skills it had deployed prior to introduction of IPPD by seconding staff from the Government Computer Services at the Treasury. A critical step was identification of a programming specialist who undertook to design the system from first principles. The deliberate introduction of ICT officers and their deployment across all the Ministries achieved much by way of mobilizing the right skills.
These ICT officers applied their skills in net-work development and maintenance, system administration, web-site design, systems analysis, and trouble shooting. They brought inspiration and confidence to the HR officers who were responsible for payroll administration, and other users.
Costs were largely absorbed by the human resource budgets in respective Ministries. Computer hardware costs were mainly charged against recurrent budget for equipment and maintenance-supplementary World Bank funding also boosted the efforts. Skills development costs were charged to the training kitty.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Sustainability and Transferability
There is very little doubt about the transferability of the IPPD to other large organizations. Among the first large organizations to adopt IPPD was the Teachers Service Commission. It is a much large employer than the Civil Service with 250,000 staff as compared to 187,000 of the Civil Service. Other notable places where the IPPD has been replicated are the Judiciary, the Parliamentary Service Commission number of state corporations, and Local Authorities. Currently the demand is such that the IPPD project team can hardly cope.
Sustainability of the IPPD hinges on the fact that the situation it ushered has reached the point of no return. There is no other way the Civil Service, or the Teachers Service Commission, can guarantee the payment of salaries on time without the system. Besides that, the Government has put in place very elaborate institutional arrangements for sustaining IPPD.
IPPD has been incorporated as an element of the Public Financial Management Reform initiative (PFMR). The initiative has other members who play key roles in management of Public Finances, including Constitutional offices. Notable are Kenya Revenue Authority, Internal Auditor General, Parliamentary Service Commission, Budget Supply Department of Treasury, Accountant General, Economic Affairs Department, Public Procurement Oversight Authority, Debt Management Department, Pensions Department, and Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). IPPD is therefore part of the culture and mechanism of bringing financial stability and predictability to the whole country
Replication at International level should entail drawing lessons through the major implementation steps, efficacy of the solutions, and the institutional framework for sustainability.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Impact and Lessons
Currently IPPD manages HRM information for about half a million public servants in over fifty installation sites, some of which are in their sixth year of operation. Having attained all its objectives, IPPD is a clear pointer of how success breeds success, and attracts supportive partnerships. IPPD provides lessons in collaboration and partnerships among key Government Ministries, and networking with international development partners which include the World Bank and European Union.
Large projects such as IPPD are best done through collaborative effort rather than by a single player. It brings the confidence that the Public Service has the skills to undertake ambitious projects.
IPPD has changed the orientation of the Public
Service and the manner in which the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of State for Public Service conduct business. For instance, because of it, MSPS enjoys greater momentum in formulating and implementing new policies on HRM such as District Based Recruitment Policy, Gender Mainstreaming, among others.
It represents a new front in reducing fraud, prudent use of budgetary resources, access to information, professional ethics, and institutional capability to make decisions.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of State For Public Service
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   TITUS NDAMBUKI
Title:   PERMANENT SECRETARY  
Telephone/ Fax:   +254-20-2227411
Institution's / Project's Website:   +254-20-2210192
E-mail:   ps.publicservice@kenya.go.ke  
Address:   30050
Postal Code:   00100
City:   NAIROBI
State/Province:   NAIROBI
Country:   Kenya

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