To resolve the subsisting gaps and opportunities for full public sector-wide adoption, the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, said the full complement of human resource modules of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) should revolve around change management creativity.

Olaopa spoke yesterday in Abuja during the Go-Live ceremony and official launch of the IPPIS Human Resource Modules by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Didi Walson-Jack.

For Walson-Jack, who stressed that the civil service must be supported by systems to deliver its mandate effectively, a significant feature of the system is that it would stop the trend of lobbying in the civil service and strengthen internal control and oversight.

According to Olaopa, the change management creativity should include getting a total handle on the whole issue of data integrity and systems’ enhanced capability, and widening the scope of its benefit in deployment for the overall public administration system transformation.

He said there should be a sound explanation and resolution for the data verification lag discovered periodically, as in the discrepancies observed in personnel data generated with biometric checks, and those generated during physical verification.

Describing the launch as heart-warming, he said it would enable over 600,000 civil servants to manage records, download pay slips and apply for leave digitally from any location around the globe.

Olaopa noted that it would enable data-driven workforce planning and precise manpower forecasting, as well as automate promotion tracking, disciplinary process logging and grievance reporting.

“It can pair HR modules with structural frameworks like the Public Service Mentoring policy to bridge leadership succession gaps,” he stated. “It does mean that all hands must be on deck as we deploy creative change management strategies to transit from IPPIS as a monitoring tool to one owned by the workforce as a personal asset.”

However, Olaopa stressed the importance of appointing a digital ambassadors’ network of champions from the corps of tech-savvy junior and mid-level digital natives across the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) “to operate as local level help-service support to older officers and slow-learners, so they could catch up with the speed and timeline we envision for the employee self-service as a game changer in this whole dynamic.”

He explained that the launch was a culmination of a long journey in institutional reform following the IPPIS’ initial conception in 2006, its pilot launch in 2007, and subsequent phased rollouts of partial modules.

According to him, the “IPPIS has unarguably modernised personnel records and payroll information system in the federal service.

“This is not just in terms of the quantum of ghost workers that its biometric feature keeps eliminating; it has also pooled all workforce information that was in silos into a centralised database, while enabling automated monthly salary payments straight to employees’ bank accounts alongside transparent, direct third-party deductions like taxes, pensions and cooperative dues.”