The USAID-funded Capacity Building Activity Project (CBA) has improved payroll data accuracy and enabled the Afghanistan Ministry of Education to more accurately forecast labor costs, reducing budget overestimations by as much as 64 million U.S. dollars annually.

In an effort to improve transparency and accountability within the ministry and address coding errors that originated during a 2008 civil servant employee grade reclassification, CBA is verifying and aligning data between the ministry’s Payroll Registration Information System (PRIS) and “Tashkeel” database, which details approved job positions, levels, and grades. CBA verified over 108,000 Tashkeel data entries against payroll records during the second quarter of fiscal year 2019 and corrected the grades of more than 82,000 employees; most had been miscoded as grade 3 or 4, when they should have been coded as 5 or 6*.

This effort has been paired with training and database improvements and enhancements to database controls to reduce the likelihood of future errors. The resulting improvement in budget forecasting accuracy will enhance budget execution rates and enable the ministry to consider other operational and capital expenditures to improve education service delivery in Afghanistan.

“This important activity has strengthened [the] Ministry of Education’s existing staffing system, removed discrepancies in employees’ grades and secured the availability of identical data in both payroll and human resources databases. The Ministry of Education is now able to accurately and [punctually] address any tacit scam in employees Tashkeel and payroll grades,” said Mr. Khalid Arshad, General Director of Human Resources at the Ministry of Education.

The five-year, $23.2 million CBA project supports the objectives of transparency and accountability in alignment with the ministry’s 2017-2021 National Education Strategic Plan.

*Note that the coding error only resulted in an overestimation of labor costs in the annual budget. Staff received appropriate salaries.