Other leaflets in this series include:

Empowering Civil Society through Access to Information Strengthening Information for Safety, Security and Accessible Justice Strengthening Health Care with Patient-Based Information Managing Financial Information Decentralising Government Information Accessing Land Information Protecting and Preserving Electronic Information Developing a National Strategy for Records and Information Management Building a Records Profession Managing Public Sector Records Study Programme: A Comprehensive Resource for Records Managers and Archivists

Managing Human Resource Information

Our government doesnt know how many people it employs, where they are, what theyre doing or how much theyre paid.

International Records Management Trust

International Records Management Trust

12 John Street London WC1N 2EB United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 20 7831 4101 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7831 7404/6303 Email: info@irmt.org Website: www.irmt.org Registered Charity no. 1068975 Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in England no. 3477376

Information for Good Governance

The Challenge
Accurate evidence of decisions about personnel matters is essential to: controlling the payroll managing and deploying staff eliminating ghost workers decentralising services improving incentives developing staff capacity.

We Can Help to:

Computerised payroll and personnel systems are a powerful tool for improving the quality of human resource information. Head counts and surveys on their own do not provide accurate and up-to-date data for sustainable sytems. Paper-based files, which contain legally verifiable evidence of employees rights and duties, provide the information needed to explain and authorise changes to the payroll. assess the quality of the records available to support human resource and payroll management clarify policy on human resource management as a basis for defining information flows and appropriate control systems ensure that automated human resource information systems remain complete and up-to-date design and implement a policy and procedures for paper-based personal files integrate electronic and paper systems introduce procedures for cross-verifying payroll and human resource data against records held on paper-based files design and implement effective procedures, draft relevant guidance materials and train staff identify training needs and develop training materials for managing human resource records.

inadequate human resource information

database does not meet user requirements

payroll data, head counts, surveys are used as data sources

computerised data is inaccurate