More tech support for Novopay
An extra $6 million is being pumped into technical support and training for the end of year/start of year process to ensure school payroll runs smoothly.
Steven Joyce, minister responsible for Novopay, says the end of year/start of year is the most complex annual process in the school payroll and will be a significant test of the improved performance of Novopay.
“The end of year/start of year caused a large number of the issues for schools in December last year and January and February this year. To ensure a much better result this year, Ministers have agreed to put in an additional $5 million towards fixing outstanding technical issues plus $1 million for comprehensive end of year/start of year system training for Novopay support staff and school payroll administrators,” he says.
“The $5 million is being used to resolve a further 90 key bugs plus complete other software improvements that relate to both the end of year/start of year processes and the recording of leave balances.”
In addition, 85 payroll specialists and nine payroll advisors have been employed to assist with the end of year/start of year process and additional face to face training is available.
The extra end of year/start of year funding comes from the $8 million contingency set aside in Budget 2013 to ensure the stability of the payroll system. The $6 million in extra funding will be included in the contractual discussions the Education Ministry will have with Talent2 once the system is stable, on payments for additional costs that have been incurred since Novopay went live a year ago.
Joyce says long term, and following on from the recommendation of the Ministerial Inquiry, work also needs to be done to examine the school payroll service delivery model to make sure it was sustainable and affordable.
“While good progress has been made in remediating Novopay, there is still a lot to do in the months ahead to maintain the stability that has been achieved and ensure the payroll system performs to expectations.”
