IT Audit: The use of IT systems to identify skills and professional development needs within the Public Service

The Auditor General, Mr. Charles Deguara, today presented to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives the National Audit Office (NAO) report entitled “The use of IT systems to identify
skills and professional development needs within the Public Service”. The report analysed the extent
and effectiveness of the use of IT systems in the identification of skills, professional development
and training needs across a selected number of Ministries, namely the Office of the Prime Minister
(OPM), the Ministry for Finance (MFIN), the Ministry for Education and Employment (MEDE) and the
Ministry for Justice, Culture and Local Government (MJCL)

This report included the following key findings and recommendations, amongst others:

a. The selected Ministries do not have a uniform formal approach for the identification of the
skills they require, nor do they have the adequate tools in place to achieve this objective.
Only MEDE, to a certain extent, could identify the skills/qualifications of their teaching
workforce in Government schools through their Student Teachers System (STS) application.
In this context, the selected Ministries are limited in their ability to plan ahead and fill the
workforce capability gaps in a comparable or structured way unless the Skills and
Qualifications module of the central HR system is implemented across Government to
facilitate this process.

b. The NAO is concerned that Ministries and line departments are still relying on a legacy
system, such as the Human Resources Information Management System (HRIMS). This poses
problems due to compatibility issues with the latest Microsoft Windows Operating Systems,
obsolescence or lack of security/technical support.

c. A number of inconsistencies were observed across the selected Ministries and line
departments in terms of the responsibility for updating personal details on HRIMS. This may
give rise to errors due to the additional human input.

d. The NAO is concerned that the Ministries selected for the purpose of this IT audit do not
keep track of those Public Service officers within their Ministry who have attended training
courses organised by the Institute for the Public Services (IPS) within OPM, and have to
resort to the IPS to generate such a report when the need arises. The NAO questions how
employee-training needs assessments are carried out, since basic information of
professional development/training courses attended is not being kept by the selected
Ministries.

The NAO recommended that in the short-term, the People and Standards Division (PSD) should take
the initiative to ensure greater standardisation of HR processes mentioned in this audit report and
the continuous updating of all relevant HR records, which are required for the identification of skills
and professional development needs. In the long-term, the NAO encourages key stakeholders to
take the necessary steps to ensure the implementation of a fully comprehensive HR system, as
outlined in Government’s HR related management plan entitled “Human Resources and Skills
Development Strategic Policy Framework – A way forward for 2014-2020”.