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Hi Carl, thanks for the pointer towards the HR Open Standards (HR-XML) – I wasn’t aware of them, and they look like they’re being adopted quite widely in recruitment/screening systems.
The key question is probably: do the older payroll systems used by most governments accommodate these standards? As Tariq points out, although a persuasive case can be put to an MoH to introduce new HR information systems, it is a huge challenge to get MoF staff to modify their systems, since this doesn’t directly benefit them.
So for this to work, either their payroll suppliers need to adopt HR-XML standards, or we need to develop HR-XML ‘connectors’ for the major payroll packages that are out there, which can use the native APIs, messaging or export functionality in each system…
Either way, experience tells me that the effort involved would be well worth the benefits it would bring.
PS – full disclosure: I wasn’t able to join the webinar, so am basing my comments solely on the forum discussions.
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Payroll systems usually hold only very basic information, and have limited reporting capabilities – plus they usually don’t cover all public healthcare staff (in many countries government staff are supplemented by staff paid directly by donors, and by doctors/nurses from partner organisations).
So there is a strong need for the much more comprehensive workforce information that a HRIS provides. The point Tariq makes is a good one, but I think if you are prepared to modify your HRIS to fit the MoF’s systems (rather than vice-versa), then you can make good headway.
In Swaziland in 2007, with support from IntraHealth, I helped the MoH set up a monthly download from the MoF payroll system into the HRIS, linking up payroll data to the wider range of data maintained in the HRIS.
This gave the HRIS solid foundations, and created a virtuous circle – not only did it keep the HRIS up-to-date, it also enabled the MoH to pick up errors in the payroll system, and put through forms to have them corrected. (This mostly related to names, dates-of-birth or locations of staff, but in a few cases we were able to identify staff who had left but were still on the payroll.)
But customised integrations like this are fragile – one software update and everything can break down – so taking this to scale really requires us to start building and using standardised tools for this integration work.
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