23/11/2020
UTAS, IPPIS and GIFMIS: The Software Development Perspective (Part 1)
At the height of the FG/ASUU bond of contentions is the adoption of an appropriate payment platform for the university personnel’s. While the Government is proposing to include University staffs into the government accepted platform called IPPIS, ASUU on the other hand has vehemently rejected this proposition and has instead gone to develop a new payment platform called UTAS for consideration by the FG. As a temporary solution, the ground was shifted and agreed by both FG/ASUU to use the old payment platform called GIFMIS for payment of the outstanding of the University academic staff salaries for now.
So, what’s all this imbroglio about payment platforms or appropriate software’s to be used.
Is it that one software was poorly designed and hence the need to reject it completely.
Why has ASUU gone ahead to design a new one and proposed it as an alternative to IPPIS, is it that it has better resources and capability to design software’s than the office of the accountant general(OAGF) or what necessitate such move.
Yet still, why is the GIFMIS platform, which is an old migrating platform considered the rejected stone now coming to be the savior of the day agreed and accepted by both parties.
Before we look at the software development perspective of the issue, is good to give a detail insight into the operations of these payment platforms hence there advantages and disadvantages.
Let’s look at these features starting from the later.
GIFMIS: The Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) was developed on 2003 by the OAGF to handle budgetary allocations to mostly federal institutions and some government Agencies.(www.gifmis.gov.ng)
By design, this platform simply allows for the budgetary management of all personnel cost of federal institutions. It allows each institutions an enabling gateway to input each month the net amount that will be paid to its staff and subsequently deduct such from the institutions voted accounts.
It’s a very flexible system and has been handling its objectives effectively. Its main advantage is the fact that each institutions manages its staff profiling independently thereby making them autonomous and have some sense of input controls to what is being paid.
With GIFMIS, it is the responsibility of such institutions to compute its staff emoluments on a monthly basis, handle all statutory incomes and deductions which by the way has been consolidated by such institutions .The accounts details of such staff and the Net amount expected to be paid is then uploaded to the GIFMIS platform at a Specified date of the month (latest 25th day of the Month) and the expected trigger for transfer will be handled by the system.
Now, the disadvantage of this system is the fact that because it handles every institution as a separate entity, it cannot detect or differentiate payments to same staff by any two different institutions.
it’s not possible to avoid duplication of payment to individual accounts by two separate institutions ( this is necessary by the way because of visiting and sabbatical staff and contract assignments).
IPPIS : The Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) is an information Communications Technology (ICT) project initiated by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of payroll administration for its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).( www.ippis.gov.ng)
This is the new baby of the OAGF and hopefully the central payment system to be adopted for most MDA’s.
It was Conceptualized in 2006 and some selected MDA’s (about 7 initially) were fully migrated and paid on the platform as at July, 2007.
Now, having seen some of the advantages of the system, it was the desire of the office of the Accountant General to Migrate all government personnel and institutions into the platform which has become a very difficult and challenging task due to the peculiarities of some of these institutions especially universities and even military and paramilitary.
Before discussion some of the drawbacks of the system, let’s look the advantages.
IPPIS actually centralizes the computation of all the personnel emoluments to the system and hence all deductions like Taxes, Housing Contributions are deducted from source. It uses the staff biometrics during enrollment to uniquely identify each federal government staff as an entity on the platform, thereby making it impossible for the system to pay the person twice in a month even if he has been engaged by another federal institution. IPPIS central management has also made the OAGF the single payment office of all federal personnel’s with less or no input from the MDA’s on a Monthly basis.
IPPIS disadvantages is somehow by design as it fails to recognize the structures of some institutions which allow for autonomous operations and recruitments in their operations. By the mandates of establishment of universities and some colleges, its staffs are recruitment and paid based on a need demand and dearth of expertise in that area. That is why professor in one federal institution can be designated a position as a visiting professor in another federal institution and be paid by both institutions on a monthly basis without any issue as regards to his employment status.
Thus, this workability and functionality cannot be solved or enforced without recognizing the statutory structures of such institutions as is being claimed by proponents of IPPIS.
Such drawbacks are as follows:
IPPIS, does not allow a payment by 2 different institutions to the same staff on the basis that there are same entity as federal government personnel’s. This is a flaw by design because the structure of some institutions like universities allow persons to work in 2 or more institutions and be paid either full, part or a percentage of his original institutions salary. This is the case with visiting staff, Sabbatical Staff and in some cases Contract Staff in most universities and Colleges even at International levels.
The idea of Central deductions by IPPIS is also a drawback, for example, most states government in which these institutions are domiciled use to enter into negotiations with such institutions to give waivers or reductions on Personal Income Tax (PAYE) to its staff due to some community service its render to such state governments. This therefore will not be recognized by such a central system like IPPIS.
Some deductions like the National Housing Funds (NHIF) are also not implementable by most institutions and can there not be applied across board.
Lastly on the drawbacks is the key responsibility of flexibility and user input to the system. For instance, an institution can punish a staff for absenteeism by giving half salary for a particular month to a staff, a times it may be for some settlements such as local loans or even repayment for some damages. Without the inputs of the institutions to the platform it will be impossible for the central system to enforce such activities as desired by the institutions.
UTAS: The University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) is the new baby on the block and ASUU answer to the whole Imbroglio. It is still undergoing testing and has not gone live to see its advantages or disadvantages.
The necessity to develop UTAS was born out of ASUU desire to proof to the OAGF that the peculiarities of Universities can be handled by the software. In the initial discussion between FG/ASUU it was repeatedly emphasized that the IPPIS software cannot handle payments of a staff from two different institutions. To this, the ASUU faulted the IPPIS software and request that they be allowed to design a solution that will handle the issue.
Whether UTAS is better and more robust is not the issue but the fact that the peculiarities of the University autonomy has been accepted by the OAGF is another issue all together.
In Part 2 of this article, it will be pointed out that the main problem at hand is not the adoption of IPPIS, UTAS or GIFMIS. From the software development point of view, what is crucial to the whole issue is the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the software design approaches or preferably called software specifications. It will clearly be seen that the specifications and objectives of each of the above software was clearly different and has no basis for comparing one with another.
In conclusion, it’s possible to redesign IPPIS to handle ASUU’s demand without the need for adopting UTAS. It may also be another way round, to Upgrade GIFMIS to handle some of the ideas of IPPIS which is unique identifications of each personnel across the platform so as to checkmate or cross check these who are globetrotting among the federal institutions. UTAS may not be necessary as it will amount to each sector having its own version of a payment platform that will constitute a nuisance in the whole payments process handled by the OAGF.
President Muhammadu Buhari in a group photograph with the Accountant- General of the Federation, Mr. Ahmed Idris. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo during IPPIS biometric finger print data capture President Muhammadu Buhari in a group photograph with the Accountant - General of the Federation and IPPIS T...
