HRIS Works: A study tour to Namibia informs Tanzania's approach to implementing iHRIS

IntraHealth Tanzania sent a delegation of staff and partners to Namibia earlier this year to learn about that country’s experiences implementing a large-scale human resources information system (HRIS). Tanzania’s HRIS is a customized version of iHRIS Manage. Namibia built its own system and implemented it with support from IntraHealth.

The Tanzania delegation noted several lessons learned from the Namibian experience deploying the HRIS in the Ministry of Health and Social Services and in hospitals:

• To coordinate information and communications technology services across ministries, a viable national ICT policy is needed.
• Rolling out to regions in phases makes the process more manageable and helps assure data quality.
• A rigorous process of collecting, reviewing, and keying in data is necessary for inputting high-quality data into the system.
• Define human resources roles to improve accountability when staff data need to be updated.
• Make on-going technical support available wherever the HRIS is installed.

When summarizing their findings from the study tour, the Tanzanian delegation noted simply that “HRIS works.”

Read more about the study tour and their findings on IntraHealth’s Global Health Blog.