URA wins gold for excellent staff development program

The Uganda Revenue Authority has won gold at the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) conference in Togo for having the best staff development program. 

The taxman put in place a well-designed programme aimed at developing existing and up-coming leaders, which has since generated impressive results, and attracted the attention of peers locally and abroad.

"When we did restructuring in 2004/5, our next step was to re-engineer processes and systems development because a lot of people had left. To sustain the changes, we came up with staff development programs from top management to ordinary employees across the institution," said the commissioner for corporate services, Michael Otonga Ochan.

Ochan said even before the award, several institutions in the country had paid the tax collector benchmarking visits, a sign of excellence, which other organizations want to replicate.

The African tax administration forum is an organisation that brings together all African revenue collection bodies under one umbrella to exchange information and share best practices.

The continental tax organisation held its second international conference on tax in Africa in Lome, Togo to discuss raising domestic revenue capabilities and mobilisation strategies for Africa. 

"The conference included the finale for the innovation competition, and URA had long decided to compete in the category of staff development, seeing that we had a comparative advantage over any other revenue body in the world," he said.

The program dubbed ‘FUEL Leadership Development Programme' has the objective of strengthening the capacity of management and staff to maximise their respective leadership roles. 

FUEL, an acronym for Fired Up For Excellent Leadership, also aims at re-energising the leadership team through 'refueling', as it focuses on personal, team and strategic leadership development.