May 10 2013
Staying with Novopay is the right decision…
The Ministry of Education had only two options regarding their payroll system – to stay with Talent2’s Novopay or to switch to their previous provider Datacom.
Steven Joyce announced on 7 May that the government would stay with the Novopay system for the time being, but that he would continue to monitor the situation on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
From all recent accounts the tide is changing for Novopay. Mr Joyce commented that, “three out of the last four pay periods have had a reported error rate of less than 0.5% – which we have been advised by our independent technical reviewers is a reasonable error rate for a stable system.” In fact the latest PwC Pay Period 3 figures have registered the best result yet for the Novopay system, with an error rate of only 0.26% (well below the reviewer’s accepted parameters of 0.5-1%).
While still quite guarded, key stakeholders and school representatives agree with the government’s decision to stay with Novopay and are starting to report positive changes to the system. “It has taken a while, but Steven Joyce is putting every effort into fixing it and now you can see all that action going on,” Nelson Principals Association president Barbara Bowen said (Nelson Mail, 8-5-2013).
Tom Parsons, president of the Secondary Principals’ Association, concedes that Novopay has a serious image problem to overcome “but the improvement had been remarkable.” He also explained that the improved system of today bears no resemblance to what the schools had pre-Christmas. (stuff.co.nz, 8-5-2013)
Mr Joyce has taken a measured and sensible approach, taking into consideration all of the risks, before making the decision to stay with Novopay. “The improvements we have seen in delivering school pay from pay period to pay period and the progress to date in clearing bugs, means it wouldn’t be sensible to make a change at this point. Making a change now would increase the work for payroll administrators in the short-term during the cut-over from where we stand today, not decrease it.” (scoop.co.nz, 7-5-2013)
But was revisiting Datacom ever going to be a viable option? Media reports (about Datacom) back in February 2008, quoted the then New Zealand Principals Federation president Paddy Ford as stating that, ‘‘schools deserve better. It’s a nightmare. We are dealing with unnecessary bureaucracy and huge numbers of errors.” And further in the report, “the latest payroll round – the first of the school term – was filled with errors. A number of schools have not received any pay, and many support staff have been paid the incorrect amounts.”
And this sentiment from a recent article in the Marlborough Express sums up the fact that Datacom was not providing an adequate payroll service for the Ministry and its demise was inevitable, “the previous Datacom system used to pay staff had become too old and had to be replaced.”
There are many risks and uncertainties for a switch at this time back to the Datacom system. This premise was supported by a recent editorial from The Dominion Post, “there are no guarantees that Datacom can seamlessly revive its old system or that it can modernise it any more effectively than Talent2 has been able to implement its system.”
And a review of the publicly released proposal submitted by Datacom to resume the Ministry’s payroll service leaves little confidence and lots of doubt as to their capability to successfully transition to their payroll system. The proposal for replacing Novopay involved a short-term return to Datacom’s old system (using August 2012 data as a base), then reconciling to update to the current database. At its own admission, Datacom’s proposal states that “reconciliation will be difficult and will take a long time” and could not estimate the cost for the reconciliation project because they had “no idea of the size of this at this point.” Another risk highlighted in the proposal was the possible failure of their “legacy system, particularly a software failure.” This is certainly not a confident endorsement from Datacom themselves.
School users have also just spent the last nine months familiarising themselves with the Novopay system – reversing this now will cause more angst and frustration. This is supported by Ross Intermediate Office Administrator Erica Prier, “personally, I’m happy not to have a new system to learn. If I had to go and re-learn all of that it was going to be a pretty big investment of time.” (stuff.co.nz, 8-5-2013)
The next key milestones are the Novopay Ministerial Inquiry, which is due at the end of May, and the review of progress in the Remediation Plan at the end of June.
Novopay still has some challenges ahead, but all current indications are that Novopay is the right choice for the Ministry of Education for now and for the future.
May 19 2013
Improving Your Quality with Good Education to Face Recruitment
Whenever we are talking about job seeking, we will surely talk about recruitment. And such matter is like something worrying for most people. It is because recruitment is like something so tempting and promising but at the same time, it can also be devastating. It is totally like that because there are so many job applicants but only a few of them are actually recruited. Have you faced many situations where you have you been rejected over and over whenever you are applying for some jobs? Without any doubt it is really annoying and frustrating. In one hand, you really need to get a job so you can earn some money. However, in the other hand, you might have some trauma in applying for a job because you have been rejected many times.
What should you do to cope with this matter? Does it mean you need to forget about getting a job? Of course, you cannot be like that or your life will be full of sorrow. What you must do is to prepare yourself in a lot much better way. Yes, it is true. Whenever you have improved your quality, the chance for you to be recruited or employed can be even greater. There are so many things you can do and one of the most effective methods is to be well educated. That is why in order to make you become better in your education, you need to get some course or even better you need to take higher education level. For this matter, actually, you should not think that you must go to the classroom again and take the lesson there. It is really fortunate for you to find that technology at this recent time has been so well developed. Nowadays, people do not need to go to the classroom if they want to get the education. They can simply stay at home and sit in front of the computer that has been connected to the internet. Yes, indeed, we are talking about online education here.
Various websites are able to give such service to you and you only need to choose the one in which you think is the best. You must also know that some websites or services can even give you legalized and legitimate certification as the proof that have become more capable in certain field. Take the example of how you have online course in web design. The service can give you the certification which says that you have finished the education and thus, it can be implied that you are capable of dealing with web design. Whenever you are applying the job with such field, you can find that your chance to be employed can be even greater. True, it is totally better for you to prepare yourself better to face the job vacancies than to feel frustrated because of it.
By admin • Online Education, Recruitment • Tags: best, better, doubt, education, education level, getting a job, good education, higher education, home, job applicants, jobs, life, make, many things, money, online, proof, recruitment, service, trauma, web design