DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT AN EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE PERSONNEL INFORMATION SYSTEM (PIS). CASE STUDY: NIGERIA ARMY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES (NAITES)

Description

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background of the Study

This research is on Design and development an efficient and effective personnel information system (PIS). Case study: Nigeria Army Institute of Technology and Environmental Studies (NAITES).

The term Management information system is the procedure for proper application of information for organizational management.  Organization, whether business government institution or agencies have always operated through information and communication. Management information System has become almost the same with Computer Based Data Processing, though Management information System is more holistic in concept than merely computerizing an aspect of business.  In the past, this operation was carried out using a manual approach by all sectors of business or commercial organization.

A personnel management information system is a set of procedures and applied technology that human resources workers use to track and organize data about the employees within a business or organization. This information can include payroll records, tax documents, and records of assigned benefits such as health insurance. Other employee information is often kept in a system of this type for periodic performance evaluations. These records are usually resumes and copies of relevant industry certifications. This area of human resource management entails both the use of a computer software program and of routine practices for entering and updating relevant data.

Businesses with large numbers of employees often need a separate human resources (HR) department to keep accurate records of all of this information. Working with a personnel management information system requires both a good grasp of technology and an ability to retrieve needed data quickly. A software package designed for these human resource tasks typically consists of linked databases containing different sets of information. One database may contain records of issued paychecks linked to another database with information about withheld taxes, for instance. HR personnel are responsible for keeping this workforce information up to date and accurate.

1.2 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:

• Thus manual method is cumbersome, tiresome, boring, frustrating and time consuming.
• Manual method encourages frauds and corruption. Figures are easily falsified and changed with perhaps some exchange of money.
• 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. 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 Nigeria Army Institute of Technology and Environmental Studies (NAITES)

1.3  Aim and Objectives of the Study

This project seeks to design and develop an efficient and effective Personnel Information System (PIS) using the Nigeria Army Institute of Technology and Environmental Studies (NAITES) as a case study. It also aims at identifying the importance of Personnel Information System in handling personnel records against the manual method.

The following are the objective of the study.

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

1.4 Significance 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 data base 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.

1.5 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 level so fusers. They include:

• An individual 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.

1.6 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 cyber café.
• 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.

1.7 Definition of Terms

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 by the values assigned to specific character. For instance, the letter ‘a’ has ASCII code of 65.

Client:

• 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).
• Is a database system, in which a work station 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 soon.

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.

Dataset: This is a collection of data determined by a Ttable or Tquery component. A data set 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.