The Singapore Government will compensate about 3,000 past and present Public Servants after errors were found in Public Service human resource records.
The errors mean that the officers were not paid their correct salaries or leave entitlements.
The Public Service Division (PSD) said the compensation would amount to around $S10 million (about the same in Australian dollars).
“The errors arose primarily because of human errors in data entry and coding of the HR and payroll IT systems,” the PSD said.
“The IT systems also had inadequate error-detection capabilities,” it said.
The PSD said most of the errors, discovered during upgrades of the systems, were related to inaccuracies in the records of full-time male Public Servants.
In response to questions, it said it first suspected there were errors around mid-to-late 2017.
“It took time to trace the specific algorithms and formula that were wrong before identifying officers who were adversely affected,” the Agency said.
This involved tracing and validating the sources of the errors and working with the various Public Service Departments to scan 102,000 records dating back to the 1990’s in order to recalculate benefits.
“Through the extensive process, which took more than two years, about 3,000 former and currently serving officers in the Civil Service were found to have been under-compensated as a result of the errors,” the PSD said.
“This number accounts for about two per cent of the Civil Servants who have served over the past 20 years.”
It said it would make good the shortfall in benefits to existing and past officers.
However, around two thirds of the compensation pay-outs would be for sums less than $S1,000.
The PSD said some individuals had been over-compensated “but as the errors date back to about 25 years ago and occurred through no fault of the officer, the Government will not recover these excess payments”.
Singapore, 20 November 2020
