By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, January 20,
2015
SOFTtribe, a local
ICT software development company says it is inaccurate for the Controller and
Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) to hold that the Akatua HRMIS/payroll
management software was fraught with problems.
“CAGD states that Akatua is equally confronted
with the same challenges of payroll management as the Oracle systemllPPD2 which
is also owned by CAGD. This is not completely accurate,” Tetteh Antonio, CEO of
SOFTtribe said in a statement.
The software
development company which says it has over 20 years' experience in payroll and
other ICT platforms was reacting to raging debate about between policy think
tank IMANI Centre for Policy and Education and the CAGD over the government’s
handling of payroll.
IMANI investigations
IMANI is holding that
the public sector payroll is still bloated in spite of claims by the CAGD that
it had adopted a technology platform called IPPD2 (Oracle) that is used to
process a portion of the mechanized payroll.
“IMANI Sources in the
corridors of CAGD, Ministry of Finance (MOF) and Ghana Health Service (GHS)
have assured IMANI that this claim is completely false,” IMANI president
Franklyn Cudjoe had said in a statement and attributed the bloated public
sector payroll as contributing highly to the economic mess of the country.
CAGD’s Reaction
The CAGD also reacted
to the claims by IMANI, saying it did not decide who Ministries, Departments
and Agencies (MDAs) put on their payroll.
“MDAs made their own
recruitment; prepared input forms to their personnel processing sections who
then captured such inputs into the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database
(IPPD) system before CAGD processed the salaries for payment,” James Ntim
Amponsah, Deputy Controller and
Accountant-General in charge of ICT at the CAGD said in a statement.
Setting records straight
In the ensuing
debate, SOFTtribe said it was issuing the statement to set the records straight
saying “over the last week a number of issues have been raised in the national media
by IMANI and responded to by CAGD, concerning the Government payroll.”
“SOFTtribe has been
specifically mentioned in a number of these interviews, and some erroneous
information has been reported on our involvement with the government payroll.”
Akatua HRMIS
Outlining their
involvement in the government payroll, SOFTtribe said it developed the first
versions of Akatua HRMIS/payroll management software over 20years ago and the CAGD
purchased Akatua known as IPPD3 in 2008, and currently uses it to process 70%
of live government payroll.
“When Akatua was
first implemented in 2008, it flagged and rejected the faulty data which had
been retrieved from the Oracle system. SOFTtribe would like to state here that
Akatua possesses a rigorous set of validations and controls, which is known in
the industry.”
Disabling Akatua
According to the CEO,
the CAGD instructed SOFTtribe “to temporarily disable the requisite controls
from Akatua such that it could accept the faulty data from their Oracle
system,” adding “CAGD informed SOFTtribe that CAGD was responsible for payroll
administration and validation whereas SOFTtribe was responsible for the
technology.”
The statement said
“SOFTtribe duly complied with their client's request and successfully processed
five years of unprocessed arrears in under six weeks which the Oracle system
had been incapable of processing over the years.”
It said “CAGD was
duly satisfied with the quality and speed of the work executed, adding “Given
that SOFTtribe deemed this situation to be unusual based on SOFTtribe's
industry experience, at handover of Akatua to CAGD, SOFTtribe was compelled to
alert CAGD of the dire state of the data they had received.”
“ Interestingly to
date, SOFTtribe is yet to receive CAGD's response to this letter,” the statement
further said.
Oracle problems
It also said “after
six years of running payroll, the Oracle system was still facing major
Challenges and on June 12, 2012 therefore, SOFTtribe was copied on a letter
from the Minister of Finance instructing the Controller to move the live
government payroll in its totality unto the more stable Akatua.”
“SOFTtribe duly
prepared Akatua for this activity. SOFTtribe successfully implemented Pensions
and GES payroll, which constitutes 70% of government payroll.”
The statement said “once
again, SOFTtribe alerted CAGD of the dire nature of the Pensions data that had
been retrieved from the Oracle system and again SOFTtribe was instructed to
temporarily switch off Akatua's controls to enable payroll to be processed on
incomplete data.”
Migration unto Akatua
It said in November
2012, the Ministry of Finance instructed CAGD and SOFTtribe to migrate the
subvented payrolls onto Akatua and these subvented agencies include
institutions such as the Universities, Polytechnics, National Service, Ghana
Police Service, Forestry Commission among others.
“SOFTtribe had
completed loading and test processing of the Universities and was about to
continue with the National Service and the rest. However, early in 2013 CAGD
informed SOFTtribe that CAGD was suspending all further migration of payrolls
onto Akatua.”
IMANI’s Commentary
“In IMANI's
commentary, IMANI stated that SOFTtribe's Akatua took three (3) days to process
70% of the payroll. This is inaccurate. It is in fact the case that Akatua processes
70% of payroll which is over 400,000 workers in under two (2) hours.”
“IMANI further stated
that 70% of the GoG payroll had been outsourced to SOFTtribe. This is also
inaccurate. The fact is that CAGD has purchased and owns SOFTtribe's Akatua
payroll software platform and currently uses it to run 70% of the government
payroll.”
“As a reputable
locally grown ICT software development company with over 20 years' experience
in payroll and numerous clients, we are extremely concerned that our
international reputation may be tarnished and we wish to set the record
straight,” the statement said.
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