PMRC prods Smart Zambia and benefits of e-PaySlips
…..UNLOCKING ZAMBIA’S POTENTIAL
By Bernadette Deka PMRC Executive Director
Policy Monitoring and Research Centre (PMRC) Executive Director Bernadette Deka making a contribution from the floor during the panel of discussion on ending Violence Against Women at the Workplace. This was on the sidelines of the 61st Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women at UN Headquarters in New York on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.
Smart Zambia is an initiative established under Government Gazette No.836 of 2016 as an e-Government division in the office of the President. The initiative is aimed at transforming the country through information and communication technologies and deployment of electronic Government services and processes for effective public service delivery.
- What is the Mandate of Smart Zambia?
The Smart Zambia Initiative has a mandate of co-ordinating and harmonizing the implementation of electronic Government services and processes in order to improve service delivery across all Government Ministries and Spending Agencies.
- What are the functions of the Smart Zambia
In order to achieve its mandate Smart Zambia has the following specific functions;
- Promotion and management of e-Government policies and programmes.
- Development of strategies and standards that enhance usage and application of information and communication technology innovations in the public sector.
- Promotion of inter-government agency collaboration in providing e-Government services by integrating related functions and systems.
- Development of supportive and enabling shared infrastructure to ensure equitable access to effective and appropriate information and communication technologies among others.
PMRC Executive Director Ms. Bernadette Deka at Church
- Implementation of the e-payslips
President Lungu commissions Kingphar Pharmaceutical Zambia with Lusaka Province Minister Bowman Lusambo
In its efforts to actualize electronic governance, Smart Zambia has introduced electronic payslips for all civil servants. In the first phase of the e-payslip capturing exercise 109,000 civil servants were captured on the e-payslip platform and these are able to receive their payslips through emails out of 169,000. The 60,000 remaining are mostly in rural areas and are scheduled to be captured in the second phase once the districts are connected to the system. The implementation of the e-payslip system has a number of benefits to the Government.
In the first instance, through the e-payslip system, Government has been able to save K72 million on payslip printing and K68 million on the cost of paper annualy (Smart Zambia). Secondly, the e-payslip system has helped Government curb fraud and to get rid of ghost civil servants. This has helped the Government to save up money from salaries from those who were either dead or out of employment.
And lastly, the e- payslip system is complementing Government in achieving its green environment initiatives, this is because the phasing out of paper payslips entails reduction in cutting down of trees and low energy usage.
