Design And Development Of Personnel Information System

INTRODUCTION:
This chapter introduces and presents the baseline of the thesis. It provides an
overview of the study and the important issues that will be discussed and
investigated

1.2 RATIONAL/THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
Personnel Information System is a computer based system for the maintenance of
the service registers of individuals in an organization.
According to Hicks and Gullet (19974; 316), “An information system may be
defined as an organized way of sending, receiving and recording messages”.
Traditionally, personnel record for federal public servants of any organization in a
country like ours are held in three places namely: Open and secret register of the
organization at the headquarters for all the staff of the organization in the nation.
The state offices for all the staff in each particular state and local government area
offices for staff posted to the local government area where applicable.
There are also operational departmental records for staff at the headquarters and
states head offices. This, however, led to duplication, fragmentation and
inconsistencies in records of staff. Whereas, a firm’s information system should be
unified, there should be no contradictions, no overlaps, and no gaps.
Information needed by many departments should be collected by one source,
stored and made available to any section of the organization that needs it (Unamka
and Ewurum 1995; 329). Therefore, the Data are inaccurate and thus unreliable as
a basis for decision making.
Unamka and Ewurum (1995; 329) say, “Unless a manager has the correct
information at the right time, he is unlikely to make the right decision”.
Since the data are inaccurate and unreliable, the information generated therein is of
low quality and decisions taken likely to be wrong in confirmation to;
“The higher the quality of the information, the better the result of the decision
Eating” (Unamka and Ewurum 1995; 329).
For instant, the name of a deceased local government area staff may continue to be
appearing in the register or nominal roll of the organization at the quarters years
after the staff demise, whereas his/her name has been removed from the state
register or nominal roll list. Secondly, there are cases where officers obtained
additional qualification beside the ones they were employed with, but these
qualifications are not accredited to them at the headquarters whereas they have
them at their states office files. Another case is where a couple of staff were
employed at the same time, place on the same grade level and step and posted to
different states, but few years later, the officers started earning different amount of
money as salaries because of one manipulation or the other. Thus data gathering
and updating are subject to delay or worse when files are lost. Though the existing
manual system of recording information is useful, however, with the development
of PERSONNEL INFORMATION SYSTEM (PIS) software, personnel records
will be simultaneously integrated and rationalized. It should then be seen as a route
to eradicating all the problems of manual method of handling records through the
creation of a single system that would provide accurate information to all in a time
and cost efficient manner.
According to Unamka and Ewurum (1995; 329), “Information that is useful in
business should be accurate and timely”.
With Personnel Information System (PIS), the details pertaining to personnel
postings, qualifications, departmental test passed, training attended, family details,
etc are stored in this system. With the help of nice friendly graphical interface,
retrieval of information is possible based on any individual or on collective
information grouped by certain categories. These categories could be designation,
retirement time, length of service, place of work or location, etc. Thus the issue of
ghost workers, hiding of files, falsification of records, and other vices that are often
associated with manual system will be things of the past.
Therefore, Personnel Information System is very much in need for every
organization

1.2.4 BRIEF HISTORY OF NATIONAL POPULATION COMMISSION
(NPopC):
The present National Population Commission was established in April 1988 by the
legal instrument creating it (Decree No.23 of 1989).
The Commission is made up of the board members headed by the chairman and 37
federal commissioners, one each from all the states of the federation and federal
capital territory. Also on the board is the Director General (DG) who happens to be
the accounting officer of the commission. The board also has appointed secretary
called the secretary to the commission, who oversees the secretariat of the
commission. The board has the responsibility to formulate policies as directed by
the federal government, while the core civil servants are saddled with the
responsibilities to carry out the policies.
The commission in other to carry out its functions effectively has eight
departments and each department is headed by a director. The departments are
ADMIN AND SUPPLY
CARTOGRAPHY
CENSUS
FINANCE AND ACCOUNTS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
PLANNING AND RESEARCH

PUBLIC AFFAIRS
VITAL REGISTRATION
The commission has its headquarters in Abuja and offices in all states capitals of
the federation including the federal capital territory. It also has offices in the 774
local government areas of the country. Presently, the total staff strength of the
commission is about five thousand. The personnel information gathering,
processing and management of all the staff of the commission is carried out by the
Admin and Supply department.
According to Unarnka and Ewurum (1995; 135), “Personnel Management also
called human resource management is the management of people at work. That
also refers to the functions and operations of a single department of the corporation
which has the responsibility and authority to select and train personnel”.
This department in order to carry out the complex challenges of managing human
resources is subdivided into divisions to enhance efficiency. The divisions are as
follows:
• ESTABLISHMENT:- Under which we have Open and Secret Registry,
nominal roll, salary variations, leaves and disengagement sections.
• WELFARE:- Here we have Pensions, Gratuity, Stores, and Loans Sections
• TRAINGS:- Here we have Manpower Development and Structure sections.
• APD: – Here we have Appointments, Promotions, and Discipline sections.

• TRANSPORT: – Here we have vehicle Maintenance, Communications and
Supply sections.
• LEGAL.

1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.
For the past four decades, manual personnel data management system has been
used. This method has its problems and it has been proved to be very ineffective
and inefficient, and some of the problems identified are:
• Manual method of preparing, gathering and processing data as a personnel
management function entails considerable manual efforts. Thus manual method
is cumbersome, tiresome, boring, frustrating and time consuming.
• Manual method has a lot of discrepancies.
• Manual method encourages frauds and corruption. Figures are easily falsified
and changed with perhaps some exchange of money.
• Manual method inflicts severe hardship on the staff due to avoidable human
errors, like misplacement of files. When there are errors, then the reliability,
accuracy, neatness, tidiness, and validity of the data would be in doubt.
• Since it is the function of the Admin Department to raise variation advice for
the use of the finance and account department (pay roll), manual method
requires staff that have some numerical background to do the job reliably. This
group of people are grossly inadequate, hence, we have a set of staff that were
employed at the same time, place on the same grade level and step, and posted
out to different states, but they earn different salaries years after due to
variation preparation.
• Manual method results in incomplete service records of staff which undermines
the personnel management function that depends upon the information
gathered from the earliest stages of employee’s career. For instance, additional
qualifications obtained after the initial one presented on employment may not
be used to place an employee adequately due to lack of updating data or
information. Further, management needs adequate information to resolve
disciplinary cases fairly, otherwise there may be costly delay in obtaining
decision for there is a dictum which says, ” justices delayed is justices denied
or unfair decisions may be made in order not to deny justices. Besides, a great
deal of staff time may be wasted tracking down missing documents.
• Manual method of handling personnel information involves waste of paper
materials.
• The size of the paper records with attendant management problem has
significant logistic implications to the commission.
• Manual method encourages waste of man-hour and resources because staff
employed to carry files from one point to another do some time use the time to
do something else instead of doing the job they were employed for. To see that
this job is done more staff are employed than ordinary should be.
• Manual method does not allow for the processing of large volume of data on a
regular and timely basis.
Given these above scenarios, this study seeks to evaluate the various contributions
of Personnel Information System (PIS) toward the improvement of inadequacies
accompanying the manual method of handling personnel information issues in
National Population Commission (NPopC).

1.4 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This project seeks to design and develop an efficient and effective Personnel
Information System (PIS) using National Population Commission as a case study.
It also aims at identifying the importance of Personnel Information System in
handling personnel records against the manual method. Specifically, the following
are the objective of the study.
• To identify the various problems of manual approach towards handling
Personnel Information System in the Commission.
• To identify and eliminate the major problems encountered through the use of
manual method of processing personnel information like falsification of
records, ghost workers among others.

• To develop an integrated and rationalized Personnel Information System in
NPopC.
• To suggest other measures that will help in eradicating the problem associated
with manual method of handling personnel information matters.

1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS.
Three Null (Ho) hypothesis though not tested are proposed to strengthen the
concept of the project work.
• HI Personnel Information System will enhance significantly the processing
of staff records in the National Population Commission.
• HO Personnel Information System will not enhance significantly the processing
of staff records in the National Population Commission.
• HI Personnel Information System will significantly affect adversely the staff
strength of the Commission.
• H0 Personnel Information System will not significantly affect adversely
the staff strength of the Commission.
• HI Personnel Information System will eradicate fraud, corruption and other
malpractices in the Commission.
• HO Personnel Information System will not eradicate fraud, corruption and other
malpractices in the Commission.

1.6 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY:
This study is significant in the sense that it determines the benefit accruable to the
staff of the Nation Population Commission through the use of Personnel
Information System against the manual method. These include:
• It supports large volume of data processing and storage; promote
information retrieval, addition, deletion, as well as other database updating
activities.
• It provides relevant, complete, accurate and timely information to the
management and staff.
• It exposes and equips the staff of the Commission to the field of
information technology by sending them to training to acquire necessary
skills in Information Technology (IT).
• It evaluates quickly the establishment and payment changes.
• It demonstrates the importance of modernization of information and
communication.
• It improves the quality of information communication by making it
available to all the staff of the Commission at the time of their need.
• The system will enable the managers of the Commission discharge their
managerial function easily on any staff at any level due to availability of
information.