ALBANIA
ATTESTATION OF PAYROLL MODULE IMPLEMENTATION
1.
Introduction
This report contains the valuation and the vision the consultants have on the
strategies undertaken by the Direction of Public Administration (DoPA) for the
implementation of the Human Resources Management Information System
(HRMIS).
HRMIS was developed to support DoPA in carrying out its tasks under their
government mandate. The system will facilitate the oversight functions of DoPA
in ensuring that all Human Resources Management tasks are implemented in a
proper manner according to all legal provisions. In order to achieve this
objective, the existing Oracle version of HRMIS was converted to a SQL Server
Platform together with a partial reengineering of its main processes.
HRMIS main components are:
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Organization management of institutions, organizations and work
positions
Management of Payment Schema and Grades
Management of Employee’s Personal File
Document Generation
System administration
The flow in HRMIS starts with the IT unit in DoPA which is responsible for
creating users, creating security groups, putting users to security groups and
giving appropriate permissions to them. From the perspective of HRMIS flow
there are six (6) main user groups that operate on HRMIS, as shown in the
figure below:
2.
Objective
The objective of the consultancy is to make an assessment of the current status
of implementation of HRMIS, including its main components (Data Base
Conversion, HR, Payroll and Treasury Interface) and the identification of future
actions to improve its functionalities.
Expected results from this consultancy: (i) high-level diagnostic of current
HRMIS system, including recommendations towards implementation of a fully
functional HRMIS system for Albania; (ii) assessment report on overall
compliance by Infosoft with all deliverables and of their level of performance,
leading to final acceptance by GIZ of their deliverables. Specifically:
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The consultants will devote their work towards producing and
delivering a high level diagnostic of the current HRMIS system and
provide recommendations for its expansion and extension as well a
costing exercise to make the system fully operational. This includes
also a recommendation on the integration with other existing
systems as well as an interface with the payroll system
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The consultants will take stock on what has been achieved so far by
Infosoft through their contract with GIZ, and advise the project
team leader regarding their performance and compliance on the
contractually agreed deliverables by the end of the project
3.
Methodology
The consultants conducted a review of technical documents, interviewed several
officials of DoPA in the area of Human Resources and Information Technology,
Technology - Ministry of Finance Information and professionals from Infosoft
responsible for the development and implementation of HRMIS.
The methodology also included realization of a Workshop conducted by the
consultants, with HR and IT participants from selected pilot institutions (DoPA,
NAIS, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Interior and Prefecture), as well as the
HRMIS project team and Infosoft. The purpose of the Workshop was to present
initial findings and suggested enhancements to the system, to further discuss
with participants and obtain their feedback on the main issues identified during
the gathering process.
4.
Findings
The Direction of Public Service Administration, the central agency for personnel
management, has not had an entirely clearly defined role. Its capacity to plan,
regulate and generate useful information for managing public employment is
weak.
For human resource management, each Institution has its own payroll
information system, making it difficult to compile a unified database for
comparing and analyzing information on individual public servants or to perform
audits or automated checks. In the absence of standardization and integration,
a ways of aggregating information is through Albania Ministry of Finance
Treasury System (AMoFTS), which is not interconnected or loaded directly with
information from the various entities. This leads to duplication of work in
information processing and higher transaction costs, and may affect the quality
and timeliness of reporting.
Payroll and Compensation
A review of compensation business processes concluded that there are a high
number of customizations that calculate individual employee compensation,
automate compensation changes, and through customized processes provide
automation that ultimately passes the compensation data to the payroll process.
HRMIS, by removing the automation and keying the changes directly to the
system, can eliminate many of these custom processes.
DoPA should develop a self-service Web application that enables employees to
review and update their compensation information: (i) review and update their
direct deposit instructions, (ii) view paycheck information and (iii) review and
update general voluntary deductions.
DoPA must spend some time reviewing the delivered pages, putting
standardized business processes in place for self- service functionality and
identify any modifications to meet their business requirements. From high level
discussions of the Web application, there will be modifications necessary to
streamline the self-service processes, eliminate data entry errors, and to make
the application user-friendly for all employees.
Human Resources
The following high-level Human Resources opportunities were identified:
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Implement the functionality to improve the efficiency of the
applicant screening, consultant staffing, candidate interviewing and
pre-hire document tracking processes
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Implement employee review, competency management, career
planning and succession management functionality to replace the
IPPR (individual project performance review) system and enhance
the strategic management of personnel and employee training
processes
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Implement a web-portal to host employee self-services such as
leaves, training, payroll stubs, certification of employment, etc
Workflow
Over the course of consultancy, project representatives attended a workflow
presentation and the topic of workflow applicability was discussed. They
expressed interest in the workflow functionality and have experimented with a
workflow prototype developed in-house, for the processing of Applicant
information.
The organizational readiness issues that surround workflow administration,
workflow design and the actual ownership of the implementation will have to be
addressed in the project planning for a second phase.
Position Management – Positions and Job Codes
Institutions use full position management with the general rule being a one-toone relationship between positions and employees. DoPA has made
customizations to position data to further classify positions, track points
associated with each position, and classify positions into job families.
With the implementation of a Recruitment/Applicant module, business processes
must be put in place to include position management in the recruiting efforts.
Governance of the system
Improve the governance of the system to better articulate the functional and
technical efforts which should not be separated. It is necessary to reinforce
DoPA with technical personnel to interact better with the rest of the institutions
and with Infosoft, the software developer.
Data Cleanup
HRMIS uses the data from other modules as inputs in all of its processes.
Indicative data values from the HR module such as marital status, employment
dates and family status can change the results of pension calculations. In a
similar manner, reliable historical payroll data is also critical to ensure accurate
pension calculations. DoPA should engage in a separate data cleanup project
that will address many of these issues.
5.
Recommendations
Procedures need to be established to maintain data integrity and consistent
information within the system. Reporting capability could be improved
significantly with procedural controls. In addition, Query and Crystal reporting
functionality have not been used. This allows users to access all data in the
HURIS system and circumvents any existing PeopleSoft security constructs.
The IADB also has redundant system capability in reporting that could be
eliminated by using the Crystal, Query and Reporting capability of PeopleSoft.
This would also provide for a secure reporting capability in gaining access to
information.
Human Resources
The replacement of the IPPR (Individual Project Performance Review) system
with new employee review functionality is another upgrade goal that was
identified during the initial analysis. The move to a central system for employee
reviews allows DoPA to continue implementing career planning and managing
the growth and development of their workforce in HRMIS system. To prepare
for the transition away from the IPPR legacy system and toward the employee
review system DoPA will need to prepare data conversion plans and develop
user training schedules.
Recruitment
DoPA currently manages employee recruiting in separate systems outside of the
HRMIS environment. The implementation of a new functionality is consistent
with the stated goal of operating one integrated system for all human resources
processes.
Implementation of a Recruit Workforce module, as a part of the upgrade effort,
will require to define recruiting business process and business requirements and
develop a detailed conversion plan for migrating data from the legacy systems
forward to HRMIS.
Competency Management
Incorporating Competency Management functionality into the upgrade product
is a targeted area of enhancement for the upgrade project. Competency
Management will allow DoPA to rank employees and measure performance more
consistently across institutions. Competency Management is related to the
employee development and career planning goals that has been identified and is
an important step in building an integrated workforce management system.
One of the preliminary tasks that DoPA must complete prior to the
implementation of competency management is the identification all relevant
competencies and all competencies that will be monitored. DoPA should initiate
this competency identification process as soon as possible. Additional setup
tasks such as identifying competency clusters, establishing rating models and
associating competencies with training programs must be completed as well.
DoPA does not have a legacy competency system so data mapping will be less
of problem. Other existing sources of competency setup data such as employee
reviews and job descriptions will be evaluated in the setup process.
Payroll and Compensation
During the consultants analysis, the compensation and payroll systems and
business requirements where reviewed with the goal of reducing system
customizations and increasing system effectiveness. As a result of this analysis
it was determined that DoPA has several unique business requirements that will
require continued customizations. Many of these customizations simplify and
automate data flow by carrying data from the point of user input through to the
payroll system. The cost of migrating these customizations must be compared
to the cost of hiring additional staff to manage the manual processing
alternative.
6.
Conclusions
The enhancements to HRMIS discussed above were cost in conjunction with
Infosoft, the company responsible for the development of the application. The
estimated cost for the new functionalities is:
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Add a new work-flow to manage the recruitment and hiring
processes: €30K
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Integrate the current Individual Performance Evaluation into the
HRMIS work-flow: estimated cost €10-15K
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Develop a self-service platform to allow users to interact with
HRMIS services: estimated cost €20-25K
Enhancing HRMIS reporting capability: estimated cost €25-50K
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Develop a comprehensive system support plan covering post
guarantee period: estimated cost €35-70K