DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT PERSONNEL INFORMATION SYSTEM

1.1 Introduction

Local Government Personnel information system is a system that tends to have clearly defined inputs and outputs that enable and provide necessary facilities for accurately and efficiently managing an organizational process. In a local government, there are data to be collected, processed and stored for reference purposes, especially those concerning the personnel in the local government. Conducting these operations manually creates many protocols that delay office job delivery. As such, officials sought means to better their operations by using new technological means that will hasten office activities and speed up data processing. To achieve this, information technology (IT) is being employed. Personnel Information system is an electronic record management system that can aid human resources managers to capture and store personnel information in a computer system to facilitate planning and management of human resources. Human Resources Management (HRM) is management function that helps managers to recruit, select, train and develop members for an organization.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

1.2 Background of Study

The development of personnel management dates back to the period of World War I around the year 1915 and more recently to the human relations movement of 1935 − 1950. In one of the studies of Elton mayor, he discovered that psychological factors as well as social factors influence individuals at work rather than physical factors.

Traditionally, it was practiced in homes where the father is the head of the family. It was he who planned what the family should do, the type of farming, size and where to sell the harvested products. His wives and children helped in the process, no external recruitment was involved, so the more wives and children a man had, the more likely it was that the family be well-of. The recent practices of personnel management in Nigeria is tied up with history and development of the public services, private companies and civil services.

In most organizations particularly business organizations, most of what goes on consists largely of transactions. A transaction is a recorded event having to do with routine business activities. This includes everything concerning the product or service in which the organization is engaged: production, distribution, sales, order and stock-taking. It also includes the materials purchased, employees hired, taxes paid and so on. Today in most organizations, the bulk of such transactions are recorded in a computer-based information system.

Computer-based information systems are systems that tend to have clearly defined inputs and outputs that enable and provide necessary facilities for accurately and efficiently managing an organizational process. It could be sales, order or record keeping of staff. Information system is a collection of people, procedures, software, hardware and data. Connectivity allows computers to connect and share information, thereby greatly expanding the capability and usefulness of an information system. Computer-based information systems are meant to reduce the stress in managing businesses or organizational procedures.

Personnel also known as human resources are the most vital to organizations and there is a need to ensure that they are properly managed and that their activities are monitored efficiently such that reports can be presented pertaining the details of each and every employee or human resource. To achieve this, there is a great need to adopt computer systems due to their advantage of speed, high volume of storage and instant presentation of data stored. This will better organize the duties of human resource managers and facilitate better record management. A database is a collection of related records and this can be applied to human resources management.

Personnel records are important as they depict the employee’s employment relationship with an organization. It is important that they be maintained and updated. This section lists what should be included in the personnel file as well as the different processes used when accessing the records if needed. An integrated human resource system is one where all elements of the system fit together and support each other. A software system can be developed that integrates basic human resources functions. For example, the job description is typically used as the basis for the recruitment and selection, performance evaluation and training and development. Likewise the information gained through the recruitment and selection process can be used for performance appraisals, training and development and so on.

1.3 Statement of Problem

Investigation revealed that personnel management involves a lot of paper work and the consequence of this is that it is difficult to manage human resource information. There are different aspects of human resources and management and the manual system of recording human resource information makes it difficult to integrate and get reports pertaining to human resource. The flat file organization occupies unnecessary office space in addition to making information retrieval difficult and time consuming. It is in view of these challenges that this study is carried out to develop a human resource database management system that will facilitate the capturing and easy retrieval of human resources information reports.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the study is to design and implement a personnel information system for local governments that will eliminate the problem of instantly getting human resource information when needed with minimum human effort. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To implement a functional personnel information management system.
2. To integrate the vital components of human resource management into a single software system.
3. To develop a system that can be used to update personnel information when needed.
4. To develop a personnel information system that will present reports pertaining to any employee or group of employees.

1.5 Significance of Study

The significance of the study is that it will provide an integrated system for the local government to manage personnel information, eliminate flat file organization, maintain an electronic database, facilitate the presentation of human resource information reports and generally organize the operations of human resources management to meet the basic human resource management information need of the organization.

This study will be of immense benefit to academic students and other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.

1.6 Scope of Study

The scope of the research is focused on the design and implementation of local government personnel information system using Ikot Ekpene local government Secretariat as a case study.

1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).

1.8 Definition of Terms

• Personnel: It is a department in an organization that deals with employees records, hiring or retirement.
• Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an organization through the process of planning, organization, directing and controlling.
• Human Resources: Refers to personnel or all the people who work in a business or organization
• Public sector: The industries and services that are owned and run by the government.
• Private sector: The industries and services that are owned and run by private companies.
• System: A method or set of procedures even personnel working together as a whole to achieve a goal.
• Data: Numbers, Text or image which is in the form suitable for storage in or processing by a computer, or an incomplete information.
• Information: A meaning full material derived from computer data by organizing it and Interpreting it in a specified way.
• Input: Data entered into a computer for storage or processing.
• Output: Information produced from a computer after processing.
• Information System: A set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve), process, store and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization.

1.9 Organization of the Research Work

This research work is organized into five chapters.

Chapter one is concerned with the introduction of the research study and it presents the preliminaries, theoretical background, statement of the problem, aim and objectives of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, organization of the research and definition of terms.

Chapter two focuses on the literature review, the contributions of other scholars on the subject matter is discussed.

Chapter three is concerned with the system analysis and design. It analyzes the present system to identify the problems and provides information on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed system. The system design is also presented in this chapter.

Chapter four presents the system implementation and documentation. The choice of programming language, analysis of modules, choice of programming language and system requirements for implementation.

Chapter five focuses on the summary, conclusion and recommendations are provided in this chapter based on the study carried out.