NAO presents report regarding IT systems, skills and professional development

Auditor General Charles Deguara presented the National Audit Office (NAO) report entitled ‘The use of IT systems to identify skills and professional development needs within the Public Service’ to Speaker Anġlu Farrugia.

The report analyses the extent and effectiveness of the use of IT systems in the identification of skills, professional development and training needs across a selected number of ministries, namely the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), the Ministry for Finance (MFIN), the Ministry for Education and Employment (MEDE) and the Ministry for Justice, Culture and Local Government (MJCL).

The report presents a number of key findings and recommendations, amongst which are the following:

1) The selected Ministries do not have a uniform formal approach for the identification of the skills they require, nor do they have the adequate tools in place to achieve this objective. Only MEDE, to a certain extent, could identify the skills/qualifications of their teaching workforce in Government schools through their Student Teachers System (STS) application. In this context, the selected ministries are limited in their ability to plan ahead and fill the workforce capability gaps in a comparable or structured way unless the Skills and Qualifications module of the central HR system is implemented across Government to facilitate this process.

2) The NAO is concerned that ministries and line departments are still relying on a legacy system, such as the Human Resources Information Management System (HRIMS). This poses problems due to compatibility issues with the latest Microsoft Windows Operating Systems, obsolescence or lack of security/technical support.

3) A number of inconsistencies were observed across the selected ministries and line departments in terms of the responsibility for updating personal details on the HRIMS. This may give rise to errors due to the additional human input.

4) The NAO is concerned that the ministries selected for the purpose of this IT audit do not keep track of those Public Service officers within their ministry who have attended training courses organised by the Institute for the Public Services (IPS) within the OPM, and have to resort to the IPS to generate such a report when the need arises. The NAO questions how employee training needs assessments are carried out, since basic information on professional development/training courses attended is not being kept by the selected ministries.

The NAO recommends that in the short-term, the People and Standards Division (PSD) should take the initiative to ensure greater standardisation of HR processes mentioned in this audit report and the continuous updating of all relevant HR records, which are required for the identification of skills and professional development needs. In the long-term, the NAO encourages key stakeholders to take the necessary steps to ensure the implementation of a fully comprehensive HR system, as outlined in the Government’s HR-related management plan entitled ‘Human Resources and Skills Development Strategic Policy Framework - A way forward for 2014-2020’.

This report may be accessed through the National Audit Office website www.nao.gov.mt