Archived - Audit of the PeopleSoft System - Follow-up Report Status Update as of September 30, 2011

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Action Plan Implementation Status Update Report to the Audit Committee - As of September 30, 2011

Human Resources and Workplace Services Branch

Audit of the PeopleSoft System
Approval Date: 09/24/2010

Project Recommendations	Action Plan	Expected Completion Date	Program Response
1. To support successful training and orientation, HRWSB, in conjunction with the CIO Branch, should document workflows for HR activities and develop a sustainable training program that integrates HR business processes and outlines how to use the PeopleSoft system. HRWSB should also consider a review of the existing business process framework and leveraging leading practices to revise the current approach. Resources should be focused on corrective actions in order to maintain a high quality of data in PeopleSoft. An analysis of training and communication gaps could be conducted to use existing resources more effectively and to maintain consistency.	Documentation: HRWSB, with the support of IM/IT is working towards: Documenting detailed HR business processes and related system processes in five specific area: Staffing, Pay and Benefits, Classification, Learning and Development and HR Planning. Standardizing processes and procedures across all regions Implementing a consistent way for HR staff to execute business activities, process transactions, and ensure quality of data. The HR documentation started in July 2010 and continues till March 2012: Staffing: Business processes and workflows were documented and will be published in the User Productivity Kit (UPK) system by December 2010. Pay and Benefit: Business processes documentation and workflows are nationalized and published. UPK system documentation will be rolled out by October 2010. Classification: Business processes documentation and workflows were documented and will be published in the UPK system by Aug 2011. Learning and Development: Business processes and workflows will be documented by September 2011. System processes will be revised by February 2011. HR Planning: Business processes and workflows will be documented by December 2011. Data integrity: With the implementation of the Pay Interface, HR resources are focused on the integrity of data. Monthly meetings are scheduled to review the progress of the data integrity in all regions. In December 2009 data discrepancies between RPS and PeopleSoft were identified at 20,238 and as of September it is down to 7,726.	The documentation of CHRBP was started in 2009 and the expectation is to be completed by March 2012.	Status: Underway Update/Rationale: As of 30/09/2011: Detailed HR business processes and related system processes documented and published in the User Productivity Kit (UPK) Staffing - Complete Pay and Benefits - Complete Classification – December 2011 Learning and Development – March 2012 HR Planning - March 2013 Standardized processes and procedures across all regions – Staffing and Pay complete Data Integrity Strategy developed and approved to address data integrity issues- Complete Training Strategy/Approach developed to identify types of training and materials required to launch a GC HRMS training program – Complete Training delivery and evaluation of training effectiveness – ready to start in Oct 2011 Roles and responsibilities documented to ensure training strategies on business processes - Complete The level of effort was under-estimated therefore the completion date has changed. AES: Implementation ongoing. FMC supported enhancements identified in the audit as requirements, with approximately 900k.
	Training: Based on the newly developed business and systems processes, national training can be delivered to HR staff to ensure that users are properly trained on the business processes and how to enter transactions in the PeopleSoft application. HRWSB and the CIO are currently reviewing roles and responsibilities13 to ensure proper training strategies are in place to achieve this recommendation. Activities that will be undertaken include: Development of a training strategy & approach Development of training materials Based on the audience requirements, deliver training in any combination of classroom, on-line, or communications based training. Assess effectiveness of training program through surveys, data monitoring, and retraining as required.	Training will be ongoing due to staff changes and changing needs. Governance discussion will be completed by September 2010.
2. We recommend that HRWSB, in conjunction with the CIO Branch, revise the PeopleSoft support structure such that technological and HR business teams are aligned and that the respective roles and responsibilities are defined.; System and workflow changes should involve both teams. Communication with the regions should be established to prevent inconsistencies and projects should include better communication and coordination with all stakeholders.	Governance: HRWSB and the CIO are working together to finalize the development of clear defined roles and responsibilities that will guide the working relationships between the organization. Expected to be approved by the end of September 2010, HRWSB and the CIO will proceed with the restructuring and redistribution of activities by October 2010, In addition, HRWSB and the CIO will work together to establish a joint governance model that will ensure all HR technology projects, system and workflow changes are agreed and communicated with all stakeholders.	July – October 2010	Status: Underway Update/Rationale: As of 30/09/2011: Roles and responsibilities documented to guide working relationship between HRWSB and the CIO - Complete Joint governance model for HRWSB and the CIO - Complete Resources identified in each branch to support the application and the user community - Complete Transition plan to ensure a smooth hand-over of key activities - Complete Schedule and participate in regularly scheduled meetings with Regional PeopleSoft Coordinators. Organized by HR Process Improvement, both HRMS and HR Corp should be invited – ready to start in Oct, 2011 AES: Substantially implemented. The recommendation will be closed.
	Communication: To help address the issue of collaboration across regions, HRWSB will integrate Regional PeopleSoft Representatives in regularly scheduled conference calls to discuss current issues or opportunities across the country. To improve the issue of communication between HRWSB and IM/IT, the branches will work together to do the following: Finalize roles and responsibilities Identify required resources in each branch to support the application and the user community Develop a transition plan to ensure a smooth hand-over of key activities Identify all integration points between the branches and design operating procedures and internal controls Once the governance has been established, the CIO should also engage the PeopleSoft Coordinator from all regions and schedule bi-weekly meetings to improve communication, training and collaboration amongst region.	October 2010 to February 2011
3. HRWSB, in conjunction with the CIO Branch, should review the current suite of system controls to ensure that focus is placed on leave approval controls. As well, system difficulties associated with training modules should be resolved and the system enhanced to track employee training and skill-set information, overtime and compressed work schedules. Management reports for monitoring, resource planning and salary budgeting should also be provided.	Leave Controls: To address questions regarding automated controls, HRWSB and IM/IT will work to: Identify problem areas based on data integrity issues or abuse Determine the root cause of the issue Determine what, if any, automated controls could be implemented Evaluate the impact and cost/benefit of the controls Develop a plan for any automated controls to be implemented The HRMS team, with the support from HRWSB will work together to identify proposed automated leave approval controls within the application and will submit to the Cluster for consideration New Functionality such as Employee Training: To address issues of functionality that is not currently available in the application to the user community, HRWSB and IM/IT will work to: Consult with clients and the business to Identify business requirements Review the delivered capability within the PeopleSoft application Conduct a fit/gap between the application and the requirements Develop a Business Opportunity Plan and submit a proposal to the IM/IT governance committees to commence a formal project The HRMS application has the capability to track much more information that is currently available to INAC users. By means of establishing a joint governance model, these capabilities will be reviewed and prioritize accordingly.	July 2010 to Sept 2010 Ongoing enhancements are submitted to the Program Centre for review and considerations in the GC HRMS Annual plans.	Status: Underway Update/Rationale: As of 30/09/2011: Identified Leave Year End reports to identify problematic areas, determine root causes - Complete Identified automated leave approval controls that can be implemented – Closed, escalated to HRMS Cluster Documented business requirements to capture Employee Training and Skills - Outstanding Fit/gap analysis between the application and the requirements - Outstanding Business Opportunity Plan proposal to the IM/IT governance committees to commence a formal project for Employee Training module - Outstanding Recommendation to the GC HRMS Cluster to address management reports for monitoring, resource planning and salary budgeting – Closed, escalated to HRMS Cluster. Resource planning and Budgeting will be addressed through IHRRS Integrated HR Reporting Solution to address management reporting (IHRRS)– in progress, by end of fiscal 2011/12 AES: Implementation ongoing.
	The GC HRMS Cluster is intended to represent the needs of all departments using PeopleSoft. Where a requirement exists in more than one department, the Cluster, with the support of the Program Centre work to develop and implement a solution for the entire PeopleSoft community. With respect to management reports for monitoring, resource planning and salary budgeting, this recommendation will be brought forward to the GC HRMS Cluster.	October 2010
4. HRWSB should ensure that the leave approval policy is communicated and enforced. Controls should be introduced to enforce the policy, including an automated control to prevent employees from delegating leave to someone other than their supervisor. Generic "other" leave code transactions should be examined to determine appropriateness of use. Records of changes should be retained because of financial implications.	Communication: All leave transactions should be approved in accordance with the leave policy. The only exceptions to this are outstanding transactions during the leave year end close-out procedures. To ensure the volume of automated approvals is significantly reduced, HRWSB and the Compensation Business Process Owner will work to: Identify the nature of the policy infractions Develop a communication plan to ensure that all users understand the appropriate use of the leave system. Ensure that managers receive frequent reminders of outstanding transactions for the period leading up to the leave year end cycle. Develop messaging for Sr. Management of each branch to inform them of outstanding leave requests and the progress made in closing out those requests. This messaging will be distributed at a consistent interval throughout the final two months of the fiscal year While every effort will be made to follow up and ensure managers to action outstanding leave requests in a timely manner, unactioned leave requests will still need to be closed out through the leave year end automated process.	July to May 2011	Status: Request to close Update/Rationale: As of 30/09/2011: Leave Year End system and business processes documented, including communications and procedures - Complete Communication Plan to ensure that all users understand the appropriate use of the leave system, including - Complete Reminders, of outstanding transactions, to managers Messaging for Senior Management of each branch to inform them of outstanding leave requests Identification of audience and frequency of messages Configured and implemented new control mechanisms, as appropriate - Complete Note – automated approvals are not currently done as part of the Leave Year End process. DND has submitted requirements to the GC HRMS Cluster around automated approvals, which will be monitored for delivery by the GC HRMS Program Centre AES: The recommendation will be closed based on the submission of automated approval requirements to the GC HRMS Cluster group as the decision to adopt automated leave controls for HRMS rests with the Cluster group, not AANDC management.
	System Controls: If possible, controls will be added to the system. The HRWSB and IM/IT branches will: Investigate the possibility of adding automated reminders for managers when a leave request sent to them is not actioned. Such messages could be set to email the leave approver on a predefined period (e.g.: every 5 days). Determine the cost/benefit of such additional controls. As appropriate, configure and implement new control mechanisms. Note: The Leave Management functionality was developed by the PeopleSoft Program Centre on behalf of the Government of Canada. Functionality that would prevent a user from selecting someone other than the authorized manager is not possible as there are many instances where there is a requirement to do so. In addition, this design was created on behalf of all PeopleSoft Cluster members and modifications to the Government of Canada layer of the application would require the approval of those Cluster members.	September to November 2010
5. HRWSB should define a system of record and documented definitions for PeopleSoft data fields. Together with the CIO Branch, HRWSB should ensure that data errors are corrected and preventive controls are in place to prevent the introduction of new errors.	System of record (SOR): HRWSB will work toward clearly documenting each system used to support the HR function and the primary purpose of each system. If a system serves as the Source of Record (SOR) for any specific information, specific details of that information will be clearly identified and documented. At a high level HR has a number of applications that serve as a SOR for specific data. For example: The system of record for employee compensation related information is RPS. With the implementation of Pay Interface, that system of record will receive most information from PeopleSoft. OSMS is used for budgeting and forecasting and serves as the SOR for planned salary expenditures. OSMS is not the system of record for compensation data or actual expenditures. Note: There will be discrepancies in the data between PeopleSoft, RPS, and OSMS due to timing of transaction entry, business rules/policies, and the fact that different transactions may be tracked in OSMS and PeopleSoft. The objective will be to minimize the number of data differences due to errors. Nakisa serves only as a presentation tool for organization charts. The data it represents is PeopleSoft data. Therefore, Nakisa does not serve as a SOR for any information.	July 2010 to October 2010	Status: Request to close Update/Rationale: As of 30/09/2011: System of Record document developed for HR data - Complete HRMS functionality document developed that identifies current GC HRMS functionality and what has been implemented at AANDC - Complete Data Integrity Strategy developed to address data integrity issues - Complete Corrective action identified for data cleanup - Complete Data cleanup completed for Pay and Leave - Complete Monitoring schedule to monitor the integrity of data on an ongoing basis - Complete Training Strategy/Approach developed that will assist in the prevention of data integrity issues - Complete Detailed HR business processes and related system processes documented - Complete Retrain staff, as required – On going proposing to close AES: Fully implemented. The recommendation will be closed.
	Data Cleanup: Activities to clean up and maintain clean and accurate data for Leave and Compensation information in PeopleSoft has been determined in accordance with the development of the multiphased data cleanup strategy. This includes things such as identifying how validation occurs for key fields such as service dates. The overall data cleanup activities are underway and reflect a multi-phased approach. Data are cleaned in order, based on the potential risk and impact of bad data. For this reason, data impacting pay has been the first to be cleaned as it is required to support the Pay Interface project. Regions actively participate to data clean-up; Cleaning up is monitored on a monthly bases. The activities that will be undertaken in the data cleanup exercise include: Develop a comprehensive cleanup strategy Identify data to be cleaned Determine the appropriate prioritization and sequencing for the cleanup Clean current and future information Clean historical data (as appropriate) Report on progress Effective data clean requires not only that existing information be cleaned, but that processes are in place to ensure future data is clean: Develop a comprehensive data monitoring, cleanup, and user training strategy Identify problem areas and root causes Determine corrective action to clean data Communicate with users If required, retrain staff on processes and procedures While leave data will be addressed in a future phase, it must be prioritized appropriately. Current employee and position information is the most critical data to look at. Only when the high priority current information for staff is accurate will resources be assigned to looking at historical information.	Data cleanup plan to be prepared by September, 2010. Cleanup will be ongoing.
6. HRWSB should identify and address the root causes of errors and should ensure that the system is contained and protected from the generation of new errors. Data ownership, a critical component to cleaning and maintaining data, must be established before data can be relied on. HRWSB, in conjunction with the CIO Branch and regional stakeholders should ensure that Data ownership is well defined and that corrections are approved and sequenced according to a single aligned and controlled clean-up process.15 Data definitions and a system of record for data fields should also be established and clearly communicated to conduct the clean-up process and maintain the integrity of data across systems.	Governance: Clear data governance will be defined for all staff involved in the management of the HRMS application, both on the HRWSB and IM/IT side. This exercise will involve the following activities: Defining roles and responsibilities of all parties involved in the cleanup process. Defining clear data ownership amongst the HRWSB service lines. To address the issue of preventative controls, we will continue to implement appropriate controls in the system and integrate additional controls within business processes and policies. HRWSB will also ensure users are properly informed / trained on all of the items mentioned above. Processes & Procedures: The HRWSB and IM/IT branches will work to: Develop clear operating processes and procedures. Identify and document roles and responsibilities for all existing data monitoring and cleanup activities Identify and document roles and responsibilities for future cleanup activities that may be required. Within all operating processes, identify required approvals which must be obtained prior to correcting any inaccurate data in the application. Data Cleanup: Please refer to the plan outlined in item 6 for the data cleanup activities that will be undertaken in support of this recommendation.	July to Dec 2010	Status: Underway Update/Rationale: As of 30/09/2011: Joint governance model for HRWSB and the CIO - Complete Detailed HR business processes and related system processes documented – In progress Roles and responsibilities documented for data monitoring and clean-up activities - Complete Workshop conducted to focus on how the HRMS teams can work effectively together through the transition to the new roles and responsibilities - Complete Data ownership defined amongst the HRWSB service lines - Complete Implement controls for system and business processes and policies – In progress Processes, procedures and FAQ's regarding HRMS reporting and trouble shooting documented for help desk ticketing using ITSP (Remedy) - Complete Initial business requirements documented and preliminary fit/gap analysis completed for GC HRMS e-Profile self-service pages– Complete Develop e-Profile work plan and business case Implement Self-service pages – Awaiting IT resource allocation and prioritization AES: Substantially implemented. The recommendation will be closed following the implementation of self-service pages and controls for system and business processes and policies.
7. HRWSB, in conjunction with the CIO Branch, should identify the issues causing reporting inconsistencies and should establish training and system functionality to allow management across the Department to access reports in a timely manner.	User Access: The HRWSB and IM/IT branches will work to: Develop a user access framework supported by policies and procedures Review existing user access and ensure that staff has access to the required functionality to properly execute their responsibilities. Within the user access framework, define the roles (including the application functionality included in those roles) within the application, and identify who is authorized to grant access to those roles. Where users require access to reports which exist on the PeopleSoft menu, those reports should be included in the roles and available to users based on the identified business need. HRMS is working on documenting user access and HRWSB will review and identify the business need. In accordance with the action plan presented in item 3, functionality such as metrics, dashboards, etc. will be developed following the documentation of clear business requirements, metrics definitions, and project approval.	July – December 2011	Status: Request to close Update/Rationale: As of 30/09/2011: Metrics and dashboards developed as part of the Integrated HR Reporting Solution – by end of fiscal 2011/12 with IHRRS - Close HRMS documented user roles and permissions to ensure that users have the correct access, in accordance with the business need - Complete Business validation of theuser roles and permissions - Complete AES: Fully implemented. The recommendation will be closed.

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Date modified:: 2012-03-15