News / National
PSC rolls out biometric system
17 Jul 2023 at 06:51hrs | Views
THE Public Service Commission (PSC) is working on rolling out a biometric system to all civil service offices as part of digital efforts to implement performance-based remuneration for Government workers, leveraging on technology and to roll-out modern e-pay slips.
Speaking on the sidelines of the recent human resources practitioner's annual convention hosted by the Institute of People Management of Zimbabwe (IPMZ) in Victoria Falls, chairperson of Public Service Commissions Dr Rosemary Tsitsi Choruma said an audit of the civil service in 2020 established that there were no ghost workers in the system and focus was now on fighting absenteeism and redundancy.
Monitoring hours worked by each employee who should be paid for work rendered and migrating from paper pay slips to e-slips would save Treasury millions of dollars.
The biometric system is already being piloted at the PSC head office and Dr Choruma said efforts were being made to set-up prototype public service offices based on e-technology where every employee's data would be recorded, and by extension, Government service providers would also have centralised data system whereby citizens will eventually not need to complete forms each time they visit a Government office to apply for documents and services.
All the efforts are hinged on reforming the public service into a modern sector and also changing perceptions and attitude of those Government workers who over the years have been blamed for poor service delivery.
"The PSC engaged in an exercise to review who the Government workers are," said Dr Choruma.
"The aim is to understand whether the people that we have in our database are exactly the people who are working for the public service.
"There has been talk about ghost workers and we worked with the registration office to implement a biometric programme which made sure we identify all our workers.
"We completed that exercise and honestly the commission can ascertain that we don't have ghost workers. We have workers that are legit.
"The only thing that we needed was to ascertain the codes of our employees to make sure that the registration data is all imputed into our system."
After completing the first phase in 2020, the second phase would be implemented as and when resources were available.
"The second phase which we hope we can complete resources available, is that we find system where we can be able to account for the hours of work that our employees work. Productivity is important, but also we recognise there is also, in some areas, absenteeism and we want to ensure that the Government is paying for the hours worked so we want to decentralise biometric where in every office we could actually be recording whether you came to work and that can link to your pension," said Dr Choruma.
The PSC is aware that there are some workers that work in the field without visiting the office and they had to be included.
Dr Choruma said the idea was not to monitor workers' movements, but to understand that in general they were willing to come to work and the upgrade was part of a cocktail of measures to modernise the public service and improve accountability.
This would complement the performance-based contracts introduced by Government two years ago for public sector workers from positions of director and above.
Dr Choruma said the public service mantra was to become a game changer and walk in the mantra of leaving no one and no place behind.
There was need to value new skills and proper project management skills to manage the projects Zimbabwe was implementing, and human resources practitioners were important in driving the development agenda because human capital was the key resource of Government.
"To transform what we deliver, it means transforming how we deliver as we prepare civil servants for the future," she said.
Dr Choruma said the e-government service was being spread to all sectors and civil servants will soon start receiving e-pay slips.
"In the next few weeks we will be producing an e-pay slip because the cost of producing paper pay slips runs into millions of dollars. If you look at the centre of the reform, it is how we digitise and adopt digitalisation," she said.
"Government has set up the e-government unit in the Office of the President and Cabinet and because the PSC is part of the tripartite that comprise Treasury and that office, we have that project and one of the things we are looking at the areas that can be e-enabled, and if technology can do it for us, to also reduce costs.
"As a much as a pay slip sounds like a small thing, we have to print pay slips for over 250 000 employees of Government every month and the paper for printing doesn't come cheap. So the conversation to move from paper to digital will save Government a lot of money and I think we are also faster in that an employee get can a pay slip in time before they are paid."
The conference, which was attended by human resources practitioners from across the country's business field, was held under the theme: "Repositioning human capital for the new world of work".
It ended yesterday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the recent human resources practitioner's annual convention hosted by the Institute of People Management of Zimbabwe (IPMZ) in Victoria Falls, chairperson of Public Service Commissions Dr Rosemary Tsitsi Choruma said an audit of the civil service in 2020 established that there were no ghost workers in the system and focus was now on fighting absenteeism and redundancy.
Monitoring hours worked by each employee who should be paid for work rendered and migrating from paper pay slips to e-slips would save Treasury millions of dollars.
The biometric system is already being piloted at the PSC head office and Dr Choruma said efforts were being made to set-up prototype public service offices based on e-technology where every employee's data would be recorded, and by extension, Government service providers would also have centralised data system whereby citizens will eventually not need to complete forms each time they visit a Government office to apply for documents and services.
All the efforts are hinged on reforming the public service into a modern sector and also changing perceptions and attitude of those Government workers who over the years have been blamed for poor service delivery.
"The PSC engaged in an exercise to review who the Government workers are," said Dr Choruma.
"The aim is to understand whether the people that we have in our database are exactly the people who are working for the public service.
"There has been talk about ghost workers and we worked with the registration office to implement a biometric programme which made sure we identify all our workers.
"We completed that exercise and honestly the commission can ascertain that we don't have ghost workers. We have workers that are legit.
"The only thing that we needed was to ascertain the codes of our employees to make sure that the registration data is all imputed into our system."
After completing the first phase in 2020, the second phase would be implemented as and when resources were available.
"The second phase which we hope we can complete resources available, is that we find system where we can be able to account for the hours of work that our employees work. Productivity is important, but also we recognise there is also, in some areas, absenteeism and we want to ensure that the Government is paying for the hours worked so we want to decentralise biometric where in every office we could actually be recording whether you came to work and that can link to your pension," said Dr Choruma.
The PSC is aware that there are some workers that work in the field without visiting the office and they had to be included.
Dr Choruma said the idea was not to monitor workers' movements, but to understand that in general they were willing to come to work and the upgrade was part of a cocktail of measures to modernise the public service and improve accountability.
This would complement the performance-based contracts introduced by Government two years ago for public sector workers from positions of director and above.
Dr Choruma said the public service mantra was to become a game changer and walk in the mantra of leaving no one and no place behind.
There was need to value new skills and proper project management skills to manage the projects Zimbabwe was implementing, and human resources practitioners were important in driving the development agenda because human capital was the key resource of Government.
"To transform what we deliver, it means transforming how we deliver as we prepare civil servants for the future," she said.
Dr Choruma said the e-government service was being spread to all sectors and civil servants will soon start receiving e-pay slips.
"In the next few weeks we will be producing an e-pay slip because the cost of producing paper pay slips runs into millions of dollars. If you look at the centre of the reform, it is how we digitise and adopt digitalisation," she said.
"Government has set up the e-government unit in the Office of the President and Cabinet and because the PSC is part of the tripartite that comprise Treasury and that office, we have that project and one of the things we are looking at the areas that can be e-enabled, and if technology can do it for us, to also reduce costs.
"As a much as a pay slip sounds like a small thing, we have to print pay slips for over 250 000 employees of Government every month and the paper for printing doesn't come cheap. So the conversation to move from paper to digital will save Government a lot of money and I think we are also faster in that an employee get can a pay slip in time before they are paid."
The conference, which was attended by human resources practitioners from across the country's business field, was held under the theme: "Repositioning human capital for the new world of work".
It ended yesterday.
Source - The Herald
