President Muhammadu Buhari has inaugurated a Presidential Steering Committee on the review of the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System(IPPIS), the Treasury Single Account(TSA), and the Government Integrated Financial Management System( GIFMIS) over irregularities.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Prof Isa Pantami is designated to chair the special committee.
Pantami inaugurated the Committee on behalf of Buhari at the Digital Economy Complex, Mbora, Abuja, on Friday, admitting that the systems have technical challenges which needed to be addressed.
He said the singular mandate of the committee is to proffer solutions to leakages inherent in the systems which are being exploited by some people to divert public funds.
Addressing the gathering, Pantami said: “This technical committee, has been mandated by Mr President through a letter written by my humble self, requesting his approval to review some of the technical processs and systems deployed in government.
“This committee, will serve as a president committee with the mandate of ensuring the review of the strengths of these systems and the challenges or weaknesses and advice Mr President on how to improve particularly, if there are leakages that are being exploited by evil people.
“The issue came about on the 19th July 2022, we had a meeting with Mr President along with other ministries where some technical issues and some Challenges were discussed. In the Course of the discussion, I made a presentation, there and then Mr President directed me to formalize it so that he will approve for further implementation.
“Historically, as we all know, these three ICT systems for the first one (IPPIS), the process of its deployment commenced in 2006 while for GISFMIS, it deployed commenced in 2012. While TSA, the process commenced in 2015.
“At the time they were deployed, the provision of NITDA act 2006 under section A, of setting the standardization of ICT deployment in federal public institutions were not followed. Because of this, these three systems were not subjected to government certification and IT project clearance as encouraged by law and many other government policies.
“However, inspite of that, many achievements have been recorded by their deployment. For example, based on the report from the relevant institutions of government, the IPPIS, saved the government over N120 billion naira. While the TSA saved over N10 trillion naira for government.
“These records show that at least government has recorded some gains from their deployment, particularly, with the recent allegations coming up that these system are being exploited by evil people where they syphone money, and we read these allegations from time to time.
“It is because of this, after my submission to Mr President ok this allegations that they should not be ignored and we must identify where the challenges are if any and see how these systems can be enhanced technically so that we be able to consolidate the gains achievers so far and also improve on them to achieve many more successes.
“It is because of this, we converged here under Presidential technical committee which is going to be inaugurated.
“The committee is for ministers and CEOs. However, looking at the technical nature of the work, Mr President has approved for us to set up a technical committee that will do the work, and that committee will be supervised by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, and other relevant government institutions where their role is mentioned.
“While NITDA, looking at it’s mandate will serve as the secretariat. The approval and the directive given by Mr President it is clearly mention that all government institutions that managed these three systems (IPPIS, GIFMIS and TSA) must give unlimited access to the committee to ensure that they come up with a very strong recommendation to Mr President for approval.
“Any institution that fails to give access will be reported to Mr President immediately and in additional addition to that recommendation, a punishment is going to be recommended to Mr President for implementation”.
Members of the committee are Chief Executives, Director General of Agencies, including the National Information Technology Development Agency(NITDA) Galaxy Bankbone; Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Economic and Finacial Crimes Commission, Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, National Salaries, Wages and Income Commission, Bureau of Public Service and Reforms(BPSR) and the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy(FMoDE).