Chief Executive Officers, Chief Directors and Heads of Human Resource of Public Service Institutions, at the weekend attended a day’s seminar on the Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) Project in Koforidua.

Mr Seth Terkper, a Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, said lack of credible and reliable database on the numbers of public service employees was a great concern to government.

He said that situation creates uncertainties about the available employees in terms of their skills mix and quality.

Mr Terkper said the Public Service Commission (PSC) would be required to establish comprehensive public sector payroll to eliminate ghost names.

Mr Kwesi Ohemeng-Agyei, Project Manager, PSC, in a paper said governments all over the world were concerned about the quality and numbers of their available human resource since they are important determinants in development.

He said in Ghana, both past and present governments, had been concerned about the HR in terms of the wage bill to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the performance/productivity of the HR as against the cost elements/wage bill.

Mr Ohemeng-Agyei noted that the existing system and mechanisms for capturing public service institutional and employee data is weak and fraught with problems.

“Public service agencies are maintaining HR information in multiple stand-alone environments, including paper-based files, home-grown databases and spreadsheets”.

He said the credibility of those pieces of information was not consistently reliable adding that there was no reliable method of accessing public service institutional data, let alone generating a reliable employee report.

Mr Mac-Effort K. Adadey, Deputy Project Director, Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), said GIFMIS is an integrated computerized financial management system used in Budget preparation and implementation, Accounting/Financial Reporting, Cash and assets management among others.

He said GIFMIS would serve as the official system of recording to meet Government’s budget, disbursements, financial accounting and reporting, internal control and auditing requirements.

“The aim is to establish and ICT-based Public PFM Information Systems’ functionally comprehensively across government through treasuries and MDAs/MMDAs located at Central, Regional and District levels”.

On the need for GIFMIS, Mr Adadey said it was to enhance annual budget preparation, strengthen budgetary controls, interface data from existing data stores, strengthen internal controls and auditing capabilities and improve management reporting among others.