The 6th annual Human Resource Forum was officially opened by the Public Service Minister Joe Sungi today at the Apec Haus in Port Moresby.
The two days event was hosted by the Department of Personnel Management to bring in HR Managers in the Public Sector nation-wide to attend and be updated on various human resource matters, and discuss issues affecting the HR space in the Public Sector, and find agreed solutions to these issues.
Public Service Minister Joe Sungi gave his keynote speech and said statistics are required to make informed decisions.
“The two most important resources are Human Resource and Finance. Departmental Heads, CEO’s of Authorities, and Provincial Administrators must work closely with their HR Managers to know the data of their staff, and ensure the Staff Performance Appraisal is appraised every six months to have a performance based public service,” Sungi said.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Public Sector Reform and Service Delivery, Gary Juffa said the theme for this year ‘Data Driven Leadership and Decision Making’ is timely and critical.
“Data driven leadership and decision making must become part of the normal way we operate. The key to success in any organization is strong leadership and sound-decision making, and to achieve it, we must use data to underpin our decisions and strategies,” said Juffa.
Governor Juffa said data must be used to identify the root causes of the problems in the Public Sector, to enable leaders to solve the root cause.
“To be able to collect data, we need to ensure that our HR teams have the skills and knowledge to be able to communicate this data through the correct use of charts and graphs, to create a compelling description of the situation for those of us with decision making authority,” said Juffa.
Chief Secretary, Ambassador, Ivan Pomaleu, also reiterated on the importance of having data in decision making and challenged the Public Sector of the absence to have analyzed data to be given to leaders for decision making.
Adding to that Minister Sungi said by the end of June 2023, the DPM will come hard on HR Managers to stop payroll for Public Servants who do not register to have a National Identity Card (NID).
Meanwhile, DPM Secretary, Ms Taies Sansan said, the DPM in collaboration with the Civil & Identity Registry are working to ensure the 130,000 plus Public Servants are registered and have their NID cards.
“The next step is to have these registered public servants ID photos uploaded on the payroll,” she said.
Ms Sansan said the use of technology in this global world will help the government to address issues of over expenditure and other issues in the Public sector.
“DPM has recently launched the HR Transformation, where we will move away from the conventional way of perceiving digital transformation and that is focused on technology savvy,” said Secretary Sansan.
Some of the key interventions outlined are the current upgrading of the Ascender Pay Integrated Payroll System from Version 12 to Version 20.
“The version upgrade modules are obsolete, meaning it will enable us to do online recruitment, selection, appointment and staff reporting, and the HR Business Process,” said Sansan.
