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Over the years, the Government of Uganda (GoU) has implemented a number of Public Finance Management reforms. Some of these include; the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), Decentralization of the payroll processing and salary payments, and the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Management system (IPPS), among others. These are aimed at improving service delivery.
The decentralization of salary payment processing system to individual government entities/Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs) and Local Governments (LGs) was effected in FY2014/15.
Under this arrangement, Accounting Officers (AO) are directly responsible for the control of, and are accountable for salary payments and ultimately wage expenditure of their respective Votes. Prior to the decentralization, wage management was characterized by delayed payment of employees, persistent wage shortfalls, existence of ‘ghost’ workers, accumulation of arrears, and errors in the hitherto centralized system.
Government decentralized budgeting for and final payroll processing to the respective Accounting Officers. Decentralization has offered some remedy to earlier mentioned problems although some challenges affecting the process still persist. Operational guidelines were developed and issued in accordance with Section 6(6) of the PFAA, 2003. They are being used by all Votes under the decentralized arrangement including MDAs, public universities, referral hospitals and LGs. The presence of the IFMS that is supposed to be the sole Government payment system and the introduction of the IPPS as a human resource management information system were to ease the process of decentralized salary payment through their interface. This accelerates the processing of the payroll and approval of salary payments, the detection of errors and omissions in the payroll, and strengthens the control measures of the data contained in the IPPS.