Visit Website

JANUARY 2017

DOE Payroll Team Prepares for Change

In anticipation of the new payroll engine scheduled for rollout next calendar year, Department of Education (DOE) Operations Specialist Traci Fujita is grateful that her payroll team is bravely embracing the Boy Scouts motto: “Be prepared.”

By far, DOE is the largest payroll group in the State. The department is comprised of the Office of the Superintendent; Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and Student Support; Office of Fiscal Services; Office of School Facilities and Support Services; Office of Information Technology Services; Office of Information Technology Services; seven District Offices (Honolulu, Central, Leeward, Windward, Hawaii, Maui, Kauai); 15 complex areas; and 256 schools.

In addition to always meeting the deadline to process approximately 30,000 payroll checks every pay period, the DOE payroll team, which consists of 20 pre-audit clerks and supervisors, recently launched a new electronic process to record pay history changes, audit entries, and balance payroll. DOE previously recorded pay changes manually on pay cards. Initiating this move away from the manual process was no small or easy task. It took a huge commitment from the team to create, test and implement the program within 7 months, all while keeping up with the regular workload. Ultimately, the improved process will help the team ensure a smooth transition to the new State payroll system when it is launched.

Traci Fujita, Accounting Operations Specialist, DOE Payroll & Vendor Payment Unit

DOE Payroll super heroes show their team spirit. In the front row, from left: Ellen Kawakami, Ana Che, Ruth Hapai, Heidi Jacobson, Don Chinen, Mary Ellen Navalta, Les Honda, Sandy Malczon, and

Michele Nishimoto. In the second row: Ryan Pastor, Jaclyn Kurata, Kam Chan, and Glenn Lee. In the back row: Tyson Rivera, Traci Fujita, Charles Gilmour, and Nolan Yonekura. Not present: Stuart

Uyeda, Lyanne Nakamura, and Jasmine Chang.

“It’s been a true team effort,” Traci explains. “I really appreciate our team members having an open mindset, acknowledging that change is coming, and fully participating in improving our readiness.” While there is much more to do, such as completing the process documentation, this team of DOE payroll super heroes remain unified in their preparedness and dedication to success in anticipation of the upcoming changes.

Stakeholders Converge for Fit/Gap Sessions

The HawaiiPay project is currently in the Analysis stage, which includes a major project activity called Fit/Gap Analysis. Here, CherryRoad consultants acquaint the group with the functionality in the

PeopleSoft payroll system, requirement by requirement.

Departments and agencies across the State enterprise participated in a week-long Fit/Gap Session earlier this month. Stakeholders provided input on each payroll requirement by determining whether delivered PeopleSoft functionality is a “Fit” or if it is a “Gap” that requires further configuration analysis. The next and final Fit/Gap Session will cover the remaining Phase 1 payroll requirements and is scheduled for the weeks of Feb. 6 and 13. With these “Fit” and “Gap” designations determined, the HawaiiPay project team will then progress to the Design & Build stage of the project, where they will finalize the associated system configuration settings for the requirements.

Requirements are carefully reviewed and each comparison is determined to be a “Fit” or a “Gap.”

Technical Team Constructs Development Environment

The HawaiiPay technical team has made considerable progress in getting the project’s electronic resources up and running in the CherryRoad data centers. To create this “development environment,” the team has set up state-of-the-art Oracle Exadata servers, connected them to the State network, and installed the necessary PeopleSoft software. Additionally, the technical team has loaded a sample of 60,000 payroll records from DAGS consisting of person, position and job data into the PeopleSoft payroll application. This initial data conversion allowed the team to create preliminary data maps and gave us a first look at our data as it may appear in PeopleSoft (test data is always masked). The HawaiiPay team was then able to view the data as we walked through the system features during the Fit/Gap Sessions earlier this month.

As we move into the Design & Build stage of the project, the technical team will begin developing the programs that process the existing State payroll interfaces from across the enterprise. Both primary and secondary data centers are managed and maintained by CherryRoad as our consultants are responsible for hosting the HawaiiPay system through a managed services contract.

What Are Managed Services?

CherryRoad’s Managed Services contract includes full 24x7 hosting, monitoring and management of the HawaiiPay technical environment. This includes network, application and security management

across two data centers. Some of the most significant benefits of this configuration are redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities for the new payroll system. The primary data center is at DRFortress in Honolulu, and the secondary (backup) is in Sacramento, California. Both data centers are highly secure SSAE 16 Type II-certified facility (in other words, state-of-the-art) and employs encryption protection. The State’s service level agreement with CherryRoad guarantees availability as they assume all of the risk for maintaining 99.9% uptime. Establishing this business partnership with CherryRoad leverages the company’s expertise and reduces the State’s costs for maintaining the system.

HawaiiPay Leaders Brief Union Representatives

On Jan. 24 our project leaders hosted a briefing for union leadership representatives and provided an orientation to the HawaiiPay project. It was very well attended with representation from every union associated with the State, which includes the Hawaii Firefighters Association (HFFA), Hawaii Government Employees Association (HGEA), Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA), University of Hawaii Professional Assembly (UHPA), and the United Public Workers (UPW). The HawaiiPay project will continue to provide briefings and relevant updates to the group as the project stages advance. Also in attendance to provide the HawaiiPay vision and strategy for the modernization effort were State Department of Accounting of General Services Comptroller Roderick Becker and Deputy Comptroller Audrey Hidano, State Department of Human Resources Development Director James Nishimoto, and State Chief Information Officer Todd Nacapuy.

In The Next Issue

Organizational Change Management (OCM) is critical to preparing organizations for new systems and making sure everyone is ready to adopt new processes and technologies. Stay tuned for more about how OCM will help increase our readiness for implementing new systems.

HawaiiPay Payroll Phase

HawaiiPay Project Office

Kalanimoku Building, #501 1151 Punchbowl St. Honolulu, HI 96813

The HawaiiPay project is sponsored by the State of Hawaii Department of Accounting and General Services in coordination with the Office of Enterprise Technology Services Contact us at 808.586.8800 or ets.erp@hawaii.gov

You are receiving this email because of your interest in the HawaiiPay project. If you no longer wish to receive HawaiiPay News, click here to unsubscribe.