PROJECT HISTORY

After 10 years of development and implementation, in 1998 the U.S. Department of the Interior completed its Federal Personnel Payroll System (FPPS). FPPS is an integrated system that processes personnel and payroll actions for Interior and its many clients (including the Social Security Administration). As implementation neared completion, the Department contracted to have a highly respected third-party system integration contractor (Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc.) perform an independent analysis of FPPS to help determine the future direction for human resources information system development within Interior.

The report produced by Booz, Allen & Hamilton has a number of findings that can be summarized as follow:

• At the time of its implementation, FPPS was one of the best (if not the best) fully integrated personnel and payroll systems in the Federal government.
• While FPPS was doing an excellent job of paying Interior employees and clients, it was not technologically state-of-the-art.
• During the period in which FPPS was developed and implemented many commercial human resources information systems had become available with HR business process support functionality far exceeding that in FPPS.

Based upon these findings, Booz, Allen & Hamilton recommended the following actions to improve FPPS and move Interior's HR community into the 21st century:

• Because of high customer satisfaction and accuracy of personnel action and payroll processing, keep FPPS and improve its technology and functionality.
• Create a datamart for FPPS and other human resources management related data to improve the reporting and decision support capabilities of the system.
• Develop a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) for FPPS.
• Add human resources management business process support functionality by purchasing a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) human resources information system and interfacing/integrating it with FPPS.

Work began almost immediately to create the datamart and GUI recommended by Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Personnel specialists also started to review COTS human resources software on the market. After a thorough and careful review of the market place, Interior was fortunate to find partners in ICRC Inc. and SAP Inc. to hopefully realize the last recommendation in the report.

PILOT PROJECT INFORMATION

The FHRIS Project involves a three phase pilot approach for determining the direction the Department will commit to for human resources information system support in the future.

Phase I (Three months)

The first phase of the pilot project involves conducting a "gap analysis" of SAP functionality and federal requirements. While SAP is the world leader in human resources software, it has not been utilized in the United States at the Federal level. The gap analysis involves determining what things are necessary and unique to Federal human resources management that must be programmed into the system to make it work properly (and legally) for Interior and its clients. This means identifying requirements like veterans preference, Reduction-In-Force procedures, and the federal classification system (GS, WG, SES, etc.) that aren't utilized in the private sector, but are necessary to Federal agency personnel operations. This gap analysis, and the resulting requirements documentation, will allow SAP to program Federal needs into its system for use by Interior and other federal clients.

Phase II (Two months)

Through an initial analysis of SAP processing capabilities it was determined that many of the human resources processes are similar in both private industry and the federal government. Phase II of the pilot project will involve configuring the SAP software for use in three specific areas of functionality: recruitment (including applicant tracking); skills bank (allowing for the comparison of employees and applicants against position requirements used for staffing, training and workforce planning); and employee development and training (career counseling, development of individual development plans, and the automated registration of employees for training). Configuration of the system in the three areas will allow Interior to test the software and to demonstrate the products capabilities.

Phase III (One month)

After the SAP software is configured for recruitment, skills bank, and employee development and training, pilot sites in all Interior bureaus will test the software for approximately one month. This test will allow the Department to determine how well the software performs, what impact improved business processes have on personnel office operations, and estimate costs associated with implementing and operating the entire SAP human resources software platform (in its federalized format) department-wide.

After the pilot project is complete a decision will be made by Senior Leaders from across the Department and its Bureaus on whether to begin a full implementation and if so, how to fund it.

FINAL THOUGHTS