CHAPTER 1

1.1 INTRODUCTION:
This chapter introduces and presents the baseline of the thesis. It provides an
overview of the study and the important issues that will be discussed and
investigated.

1.2 RATIONAL/THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
Personnel Information System is a computer based system for the maintenance of
the service registers of individuals in an organization.
According to Hicks and Gullet (19974; 316), "An information system may be
defined as an organized way of sending, receiving and recording messages".
Traditionally, personnel record for federal public servants of any organization in a
country like ours are held in three places namely: Open and secret register of the
organization at the headquarters for all the staff of the organization in the nation.
The state offices for all the staff in each particular state and local government area
offices for staff posted to the local government area where applicable.

There are also operational departmental records for staff at the headquarters and
states head offices. This, however, led to duplication, fragmentation and
inconsistencies in records of staff. Whereas, a firm's information system should be
unified, there should be no contradictions, no overlaps, and no gaps.

Information needed by many departments should be collected by one source,
stored and made available to any section of the organization that needs it (Unamka
and Ewurum 1995; 329). Therefore, the Data are inaccurate and thus unreliable as
a basis for decision making.

Unamka and Ewurum (1995; 329) say, "Unless a manager has the correct
information at the right time, he is unlikely to make the right decision".
Since the data are inaccurate and unreliable, the information generated therein is of
low quality and decisions taken likely to be wrong in confirmation to;
"The higher the quality of the information, the better the result of the decision
Eating" (Unamka and Ewurum 1995; 329).

For instant, the name of a deceased local government area staff may continue to be
appearing in the register or nominal roll of the organization at the quarters years
after the staff demise, whereas his/her name has been removed from the state
register or nominal roll list. Secondly, there are cases where officers obtained
additional qualification beside the ones they were employed with, but these
qualifications are not accredited to them at the headquarters whereas they have
them at their states office files. Another case is where a couple of staff were
employed at the same time, place on the same grade level and step and posted to
different states, but few years later, the officers started earning different amount of money as salaries because of one manipulation or the other. Thus data gathering
and updating are subject to delay or worse when files are lost. Though the existing
manual system of recording information is useful, however, with the development
of PERSONNEL INFORMATION SYSTEM (PIS) software, personnel records
will be simultaneously integrated and rationalized. It should then be seen as a route
to eradicating all the problems of manual method of handling records through the
creation of a single system that would provide accurate information to all in a time
and cost efficient manner.

According to Unamka and Ewurum (1995; 329), "Information that is useful in
business should be accurate and timely"

With Personnel Information System (PIS), the details pertaining to personnel
postings, qualifications, departmental test passed, training attended, family details,
etc are stored in this system. With the help of nice friendly graphical interface,
retrieval of information is possible based on any individual or on collective
information grouped by certain categories. These categories could be designation,
retirement time, length of service, place of work or location, etc. Thus the issue of
ghost workers, hiding of files, falsification of records, and other vices that are often
associated with manual system will be things of the past.
Therefore, Personnel Information System is very much in need for every
organization.

1.2.4 BRIEF HISTORY OF NATIONAL POPULATION COMMISSION
(NPopC):
The present National Population Commission was established in April 1988 by the
legal instrument creating it (Decree No.23 of 1989).

The Commission is made up of the board members headed by the chairman and 37
federal commissioners, one each from all the states of the federation and federal
capital territory. Also on the board is the Director General (DG) who happens to be
the accounting officer of the commission. The board also has appointed secretary
called the secretary to the commission, who oversees the secretariat of the
commission. The board has the responsibility to formulate policies as directed by
the federal government, while the core civil servants are saddled with the
responsibilities to carry out the policies.

The commission in other to carry out its functions effectively has eight
departments and each department is headed by a director. The departments are
• ADMIN AND SUPPLY
• CARTOGRAPHY
• CENSUS
• FINANCE AND ACCOUNTS
• INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
• PLANNING AND RESEARCH
• PUBLIC AFFAIRS
• VITAL REGISTRATION

The commission has its headquarters in Abuja and offices in all states capitals of
the federation including the federal capital territory. It also has offices in the 774
local government areas of the country. Presently, the total staff strength of the
commission is about five thousand. The personnel information gathering,
processing and management of all the staff of the commission is carried out by the
Admin and Supply department.

According to Unarnka and Ewurum (1995; 135), "Personnel Management also
called human resource management is the management of people at work. That
also refers to the functions and operations of a single department of the corporation
which has the responsibility and authority to select and train personnel".
This department in order to carry out the complex challenges of managing human
resources is subdivided into divisions to enhance efficiency. The divisions are as
follows:

• ESTABLISHMENT:- Under which we have Open and Secret Registry,
nominal roll, salary variations, leaves and disengagement sections.
• WELFARE:- Here we have Pensions, Gratuity, Stores, and Loans Sections
• TRAINGS:- Here we have Manpower Development and Structure sections.
• APD: - Here we have Appointments, Promotions, and Discipline sections.
• TRANSPORT: - Here we have vehicle Maintenance, Communications and
Supply sections.
• LEGAL.

1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.
For the past four decades, manual personnel data management system has been
used. This method has its problems and it has been proved to be very ineffective
and inefficient, and some of the problems identified are:
• Manual method of preparing, gathering and processing data as a personnel
management function entails considerable manual efforts. Thus manual method
is cumbersome, tiresome, boring, frustrating and time consuming.
• Manual method has a lot of discrepancies.
• Manual method encourages frauds and corruption. Figures are easily falsified
and changed with perhaps some exchange of money.
• Manual method inflicts severe hardship on the staff due to avoidable human
errors, like misplacement of files. When there are errors, then the reliability,
accuracy, neatness, tidiness, and validity of the data would be in doubt.
• Since it is the function of the Admin Department to raise variation advice for
the use of the finance and account department (pay roll), manual method
requires staff that have some numerical background to do the job reliably. This group of people are grossly inadequate, hence, we have a set of staff that were
employed at the same time, place on the same grade level and step, and posted
out to different states, but they earn different salaries years after due to
variation preparation.

• Manual method results in incomplete service records of staff which undermines
the personnel management function that depends upon the information
gathered from the earliest stages of employee's career. For instance, additional
qualifications obtained after the initial one presented on employment may not
be used to place an employee adequately due to lack of updating data or
information. Further, management needs adequate information to resolve
disciplinary cases fairly, otherwise there may be costly delay in obtaining
decision for there is a dictum which says, " justices delayed is justices denied
or unfair decisions may be made in order not to deny justices. Besides, a great
deal of staff time may be wasted tracking down missing documents.
• Manual method of handling personnel information involves waste of paper
materials.
• The size of the paper records with attendant management problem has
significant logistic implications to the commission.
• Manual method encourages waste of man-hour and resources because staff
employed to carry files from one point to another do some time use the time to do something else instead of doing the job they were employed for. To see that
this job is done more staff are employed than ordinary should be.
• Manual method does not allow for the processing of large volume of data on a
regular and timely basis.

Given these above scenarios, this study seeks to evaluate the various contributions
of Personnel Information System (PIS) toward the improvement of inadequacies
accompanying the manual method of handling personnel information issues in
National Population Commission (NPopC).

1.4 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This project seeks to design and develop an efficient and effective Personnel
Information System (PIS) using National Population Commission as a case study.
It also aims at identifying the importance of Personnel Information System in
handling personnel records against the manual method. Specifically, the following
are the objective of the study.

• To identify the various problems of manual approach towards handling
Personnel Information System in the Commission.
• To identify and eliminate the major problems encountered through the use of
manual method of processing personnel information like falsification of
records, ghost workers among others.
• To develop an integrated and rationalized Personnel Information System in
NPopC.
• To suggest other measures that will help in eradicating the problem associated
with manual method of handling personnel information matters.

1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS.
Three Null (Ho) hypothesis though not tested are proposed to strengthen the
concept of the project work.

• HI Personnel Information System will enhance significantly the processing
of staff records in the National Population Commission.
• HO Personnel Information System will not enhance significantly the processing
of staff records in the National Population Commission.
• HI Personnel Information System will significantly affect adversely the staff
strength of the Commission.
• H0 Personnel Information System will not significantly affect adversely
the staff strength of the Commission.
• HI Personnel Information System will eradicate fraud, corruption and other
malpractices in the Commission.
• HO Personnel Information System will not eradicate fraud, corruption and other
malpractices in the Commission.

1.6 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY:
This study is significant in the sense that it determines the benefit accruable to the
staff of the Nation Population Commission through the use of Personnel
Information System against the manual method. These include:

• It supports large volume of data processing and storage; promote
information retrieval, addition, deletion, as well as other database updating
activities.
• It provides relevant, complete, accurate and timely information to the
management and staff.
• It exposes and equips the staff of the Commission to the field of
information technology by sending them to training to acquire necessary
skills in Information Technology (IT).
• It evaluates quickly the establishment and payment changes.
• It demonstrates the importance of modernization of information and
communication.
• It improves the quality of information communication by making it
available to all the staff of the Commission at the time of their need.
• The system will enable the managers of the Commission discharge their
managerial function easily on any staff at any level due to availability of
information.
• It demonstrates how business needs could be met efficiently and effectively
through the application of information tools made available by the advances
in the field of science and technology.
• The software will be able to compliment personnel database with payroll
database. Hence, enhancing the Personnel Management Information
System and tighten the control of the payroll database.

1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY:
In the course of carrying out this project some factors tried to hinder the free flow
of the work. These factors include:
FINANCE: Finance constituted major problem as there was no sufficient fund to
round for the required materials, visit library, and cybercafẻ.
LACK OF MATERIALS: It was not easy to get written text on the subject matter
from libraries and internet.
ACCESS TO PERSONAL FILES OF STAFF: It was not easy to have access to
personal files of staff. A lot of persuasion and conviction was applied before the
management could grant permission for us to have access to the staff files, where
we extracted the form, format we used as a model in this project.
TIME: Time was not at my liberty being a student| who is fully engaged with my
studies, it was not easy for me to squeeze out time for me to out the project.

1.8 SCOPE OF THE STUDY:
This project seeks to design and develop Personnel Information System. Our focus
is on National Population Commission. Our major area is to identify and
modernize the specific function of Admin and Supply Department as regard to the
management of personnel information. The software will be able to complement
personnel database with payroll database. The sample size will be the staff of
National Population Commission Enugu state office. The design will have three
levels of users. They include:

• AN INDIVIUAL USER: Here an individual is able to view his records.
• THE ADMINISTRATIVE USER: Here the administrator has access to all the
users' record of the department.
• THE SUPER USER: Here the officer has access to all the users of all the
departments. The individual user can login and access their data/records only.

1.9 OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF SOME TERMS:
Application:
An application is the executable file and all related files that a program needs to
function which serve common purposes. The word is sometimes used
synonymously with program.
ASCII:
This is an acronym for 'American Standard Code Information Interchange'. It is
used to describe the byte values assigned to specific character. For instance, the
letter 'a' has ASCII code of 65.
CLIENT:
1 Is anything that requires the service of something else. Example, in Object
Pascal, a client is any code that uses one or more features of an object or unit.
In windows, a client is the code that makes use of windows Application
Program Interface (API).
2 Is a database system, in which a workstation connected to a server can request
for data from the server. The client workstation can process data locally and
write it back to the server.
COMPILER:
This translates a program source written in a high level language to an object
code which consists of instructions that the computer can understand.
COMPONENT:
The element of visual basic application ionized on the component palette in
the visual basic programming environment. Component including forms are
object one can manipulate. It is always self contained and provides access to
its features through properties.
DATA ACCESS COMPONENT:
Data objects are based within a visual basic program to manipulate database
as well as the tables and indexes within the database. The data objects are
the representations (in program code) of the physical database, data tables,
fields, indexes and so on.
DATABASE:
A collection of operational data of organization stored in related tables.
DATA CONTROL COMPONENT:
Data control component means a visual basic component that enables a
developer to create the interface of a database application.
DATA SET:
This is a collection of data determined by a Ttable or Tquery component. A
dataset defined by Ttable includes every row in a table and dataset defined
by a Tquery contains a selection of rows and columns from the tables that
meet the condition specified in the query.
END USER:
This is a member of an application's intended audience synonymous with
user but emphasized the fact that the programmer is not the user. According
to Delphi document, end user is referred to as the users of application
developed in a programming environment such as Delphi.
EXCEPTION, EXCEPTION-HANDLER:
An exception is an event or condition that if it occurs, breaks the normal
flow of execution. Code assigned to resolve the situation in run-time
environment that raises the exception and/or restores the environment to a
stable state is called exception handler.
EVENT, EVENT-HANDLER:
Event is a user action such as a button click or a system occurrence such as a
preset time interval recognized by a component. Each component has a list
of specific events to which it can respond. Code that is executed when a
particular event occurs is called an event-handler.
FIELDS:
These are rows of information that stores data of particular records.
FILE:
This is a group of related records.
INFORMATION:
This is a processed data/facts obtained by assembling them into
meaningful form.
LOOK-UP-TABLE:
This is a secondary table that enables database systems to use a small code
field to enable many records in a primary table to referring to information stored in another. This can be used as a means of ensuring that values
entered in a primary table are legitimate values, thus safeguarding data
integrity.
METHOD:
This is a procedure or function associated with a particular object.
MODEL, MODELESS:
This represents the run-time state of a form designated as a dialog box in
which the user must clear the form before continuing with the application. A
model box restricts access to other areas of the application. If the user can
switch focus away from the dialog box without first closing it, then the run-
time state is called modeless.
NON-WINDOWED CONTROL:
A non windowed control is a control that can not receive focus, that cannot
be the parent of any other control and which does not have a window
handler.
OBJECT LINKING AND EMBEDDING (OLE):
OLE is a method of sharing complex data among applications. With OLE,
data from a server application is stored in a container application using the
OLE object.
PRIMARY INDEX:
Primary index is an index on the key field of a database table. An index
performs the following tasks:
• Determine the location of the record
• Keeps record in sorted order
• Speed up search operation
A primary index typically has a requirement of uniqueness that is no
duplicate key can exist.
PROGRAM:
Set of coded instructions written in any of the programming languages to
perform a specific task.
RELATIONAL DATABASE:
This is a database management model in which data is stored in rows and
columns and which the data in one table can access the data in other tables
by means of common data field. The database assigned to specific
characters. For instance, the letter V has ASCII code of 65.
SOFTWARE:
This is a procedure in machine-readable instruction called program that
directs the activities of the computer.
SQL:
Structured Query Language (SQL) is a relational database language used to
define, manipulate, search, and retrieve data in database.
WINDOWED CONTROL:
This is a control that can receive focus, that can own other control, and
which does have a window handle.
WINDOW HANDLE:
This is a number that is assigned by windows to a control that must be used
to request services for that control from the windows' Application
Program Interface (API).
VISUAL COMPONENT:
This is a component that is visible or can be made visible on a form at run-time.