Computerisation of Personnel Information System (CPIS)
- A Tool for Transparency and Control by Manipur Government
- Part 1 -

Oinam Nabakishore Singh *

Executive summary

The computerization of personnel information system of the State Government of Manipur, India has been chosen for case study with the objective of identifying the traits and attributes of leaders, who have spearheaded the said project.

In order to narrow down the attributes, leadership styles and management of situations, literature review of two relevant articles was also done. The articles chosen were "Computerizing Personnel Information Systems: lessons from Kenya and "Growing Leaders for Public Service".

The author of the first article on Kenya have outlined three primary attributes of the progressive government reformer for information systems development- a willingness to take risks, a commitment to reform, and political connections that sustain the reform.

They have also listed four secondary attributes of the saint or reformer: ability to manage staff, skill in delegating, access to donor resources, and a view of management as contingent decision making.

The author of second article on "Growing Leaders for Public Service", has identified four common qualities of character and capability identified in three public service leaders as:

• An abiding focus on the core purpose of public service.
• A deep (and demonstrated) belief in the worth and capabilities of people.
• Courage-a willingness to take personal and organizational risks.
• Personal caring about people.

The data and information on the computerization of Personnel Information system were collected by personal interviews, e-mails and documents and accessing the concerned website.

It was seen that Jarnail Singh, Chief secretary of the State Government played a pivotal role in the development and design of the computerization of personnel information system.

The requirements of Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act was used to justify the project. His vision to have an accurate and reliable database of the employees of the State was driven by the need to overcome the problems of bogus/fake appointments in the Government, which affected the state finance. He coordinated with more than 100 agencies of the state government to get the milestones achieved.

The roles and responsibilities of some officers of Finance Department and National Informatics Center, Imphal have been acknowledged by Jarnail Singh. The latter organization provided the necessary techinical support.

The leaders of all the three cases had some common traits like risk taking capacity, concern for people, use of law to the advantage of the project and rewarding people. Viewed from the point of view of reframing organizations, the effective leaders have traits and attributes allowing them to use four frames-structural, human resources, political and symbolic to take the projects and reforms to their goals.

Introduction

The purpose of the present research is to identify the personal attributes and leadership styles of leaders, who implemented projects successfully in a large organization. It will also seek to identify the processes and dynamics, which facilitated or hindered the implementation of the project.

In order to identify the successful traits in a leader, literature review of published articles on successfuI Ieaders in government sector shall be made. The findings from research shall be correlated with the findings from literature reviews. Ultimately, the successful attributes of leaders shall be analyzed in the light of four frames of organizational reframing.

Research was conducted by personal interviews over the phone and sending of e-mails to two important leaders in the project-Chief Secretary and Finance Commissioner of the State Government. The following sections will cover literature reviews, data collection procedure and data analysis, findings, lesions for leadership, and conclusion.

Review of Literature

I have chosen the articles, "Computerizing Personnel Information System-lessons from Kenya" by Peterson, et aI, 1997 and "Growing Leaders for Public Service" by Blunt Ray, 2004 for literature review as a part of this research to identify the leadership qualities required in a reform in public sector.

Interestingly, the processes and problems of computerization of personnel information in Kenya have a lot of similarities with those of Manipur. The authors of the Kenya case have identified the key success factors for the development and operation of a personnel information system to be the leadership provided by a reformist leader, who takes risks and responsibility for the project, having technically qualified persons(called wizards by the authors) to support him in developing and using the technology.

The importance of management of resistance from opponents(called demons by the authors) by the reformer (called as saint by the author) is also emphasized. The authors also added that the success of information technology reforms depends upon the capacity of the organization to change, to manage the change and to survive while changing.

It is also mentioned by the authors that the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture supported the project, which is crucial. The authors also outlined three primary attributes of the progressive government reformer for information systems development- a willingness to take risks, a commitment to reform, and political connections that sustain the reform.

They have also listed four secondary attributes of the saint or reformer: ability to manage staff, skill in delegating, access to donor resources, and a view of management as contingent decision making.

In the article, "Growing Leaders for Public Service" the author, Ray Blunt has profiled three leaders who have been instrumental in producing significant change in their organizations over the years and in growing leaders. Four common qualities of character and capability identified in the report that appear central are:

• An abiding focus on the core purpose of Public service.
• A deep (and demonstrated) belief in the worth and capabilities of people.
• Courage-a willingness to take personal and organizational risks.
• Personal caring about people.

The author also further concluded that public service leaders can best be grown through:

• The examples of character and capability in senior leaders lives;
• Deep and lasting relationships with exemplary senior leaders acting as mentors;

From these two articles, traits like risk taking, caring for people, commitment to the cause and to be the role models have been delineated as common among the reformer leaders. We will find out if such qualities are possessed by the leaders of the case study.

Research Methodology

Primary data for the research was collected from the leaders, who were actually involved in the planning and implementation of the project. Keeping the objective of the research in mind, both open-ended and specific questions were asked of the two leaders-Jarnail Singh, Chief Secretary and R.R. Rashmi, Commissioner of Finance Department of State Government of Manipur.

Both personal interviews over telephone and e-mails were used for collection of data. List of questions asked of them are given in the Appendix-I.

Through their replies, I was able to get insights into the various stages in the development and implementation of the project, which will be discussed in the following sections.

To be continued ....

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* Oinam Nabakishore Singh, IAS, Principal Secretary (Agri) Government of Manipur wrote this article.
This was published by DIPR Manipur on the eve of Khongjom day 2009.
This article was webcasted at e-pao.net with due permission and courtesy from DIPR Manipur on 11th August 2009.

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