The head of the civil service and accounting officer of the District Local Government is the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) immediately assisted by the Deputy Chief Administrative Officer (D/CAO).

The Assistant CAOs are in charge of counties. At the sub-county level, the administration is headed by the sub-county chief (Senior Assistant Secretary) who is the chief executive there and accounting officer. Immediately below the Sub-county Chief are the parish chiefs and several support extension workers. The Principal Personnel Officer takes charge of the personnel unit, while Information and Internal Audit are headed by District Information Officer and Principal Internal Auditor respectively.

At the District and sub-county levels, there are built offices for discharging the administrative functions. At the parish levels however, the Parish Chiefs discharge administrative functions from the confines of their own homes. It would be appropriate to implement the planned construction of parish office blocks or in the event of availability of funds to rent (semi) permanent buildings for offices.

The Management Services Department is a core department responsible primarily for the promotion of good governance and effective and efficient administration at all levels within the District. This is basically done through a coherent coordination mechanism of all the activities of the different departments and LLGs. Thus, the Department endeavours to maintain an open and effective channel of communication between the various departments, the LLGs, development partners, the Centre and the District leadership. It equally steers and ensures that there is adherence to sound fiscal and managerial policies, regulations, laws and guidelines for proper management in a bid to realize value for money for all funded activities. Further checks on technical staff to find out where they are meeting their targets and commitments as agreed in the client charter of 2009/10.

The Department has similarly within the last couple of years been responsible for the coordination of disaster preparedness and management activities. It is also the Department’s role to ensure that the capacities of both the elected (political) and appointed (technical officers) are built for effective performance and high quality productivity

The management services department basically directs controls, coordinates and guides the operations of the District Local Government and it comprises of four key sections namely: Administration, Information, Human Resources, and Internal Audit.

Its major role is to ensure the effective and efficient delivery of social services through the mechanism of good governance and the coordination of the activities of the departments, LLGs and NGOs.

This is normally done through regular monitoring and mentoring, monthly departmental and Technical planning committee meetings, monthly meetings with NGOs and DDMC, Sectoral and EXCOM committee meetings. Regular reports are also solicited and received from all these relevant stakeholders analysed and action taken on them.

Lira District has one Higher Local Government, one Municipal Local Government (with 4 division LGs) and 9 Sub-county Local Governments. There are 1 County Administrative units, 103 parish administrative units, 20 wards administrative units, 1,547 village administrative units and 20 cell administrative units.

Some of the lower administrative units especially the parishes are a bit too big for effective administration in terms of real size and population. Consequently there is need to sub-divide them even after the division which took place in 2009/10.