The Federal Government is considering an intervention of a digital government agency, Galaxy Backbone, for Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) platform, insisting that no going back in enrolling all its employees, including university lecturers on the platform.
Daily Trust reports that IPPIS Secretariat is a Department under the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, responsible for payment of salaries and wages directly to Government employee’s bank account with appropriate deductions and remittances of 3rd party payments.
Those 3rd parties include: Federal Inland Revenue Service, State Boards of Internal Revenue, National Health Insurance Scheme, National Housing Fund, Pension Fund Administrator, Cooperative Societies, Trade Unions Dues, Association Dues and Bank Loans.
The Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, while fielding questions from newsmen in Abuja after a meeting with the Managing Director of Galaxy Backbone, Muhammad Abubakar, explained that reform in public finance management is necessitated by great loss in revenue generation.
“As you are aware, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation drives all the reforms around Public Finance Management: The TSA, IFSAS implementation, GIPMIS programme, the strategic revenue growth initiative, the audit modernization and a host of others as well as e-Collections.
“So, these reform initiatives revolve around ICT tools and we believe this is your area of core mandate and you have capacity. We believe we should also patronize you as a government company, looking inwards rather than going too much far away, consulting foreign nations, even within. We will continue to do that,” he said
No fewer than 459 MDAs on IPPIS Platform as at 31st June, 2017. The department is responsible for processing and payment of salary to over Three hundred thousand (300,000) Federal Government Employees across the 459 MDAs.
In his reaction, Galaxy Backbone boss, Abubakar promised that the agency would ensure quality delivery.