Government releases blueprint for payroll fix

Deputy Premier and Minister for Health Paul Lucas today announced the Government’s blueprint to finalise Queensland Health’s payroll system improvement.

“Our hard-working staff were seriously let down by the implementation of the Queensland Health payroll system,” Mr Lucas said.

“It has been a long road and I thank them for their patience.”

Mr Lucas said the Government engaged Ernst & Young in July to undertake a comprehensive review of the payroll system.

“Last week the Auditor-General identified that Queensland Health had made significant progress to stabilise the system,” he said.

“But we have always said that we are not going to rest until we have a 21st century system that our hard-working staff deserve.

“That’s why we will adopt Ernst & Young’s recommendations to deliver a blueprint for optimising the system,” Mr Lucas said.

The blueprint will deliver:

• Planned incremental payroll system improvements month-by-month between November 2010 and June 2011, to deliver a system that is more accurate and efficient than today.
• At the same time, from January 2011 an 18 month reconfiguration of the whole system which will fundamentally improve the system’s performance, and deliver new features that will make life easier for staff.

By June 2011, the Payroll Improvement Program will have achieved significant improvements to the accuracy and efficiency of the payroll system.

Already, major progress has been made to make improve pay accuracy and effectiveness.

As a result, the number of staff payroll enquiries has dropped by around 75 per cent, the backlog of adjustments has been reduced by 90 per cent, and the number of staff seeking interim payments to make up for low-pays is down to 20 per cent of its peak in May.

Further, the 18 month re-configuration will mean the introduction of innovations such as electronic forms processing, improvements to leave and termination processing, enhanced reporting and a payroll portal to provide for future employee and manager self service capabilities.

The changes will be delivered and thoroughly tested in a parallel copy of the software, before being introduced into the pay system.

That will ensure changes can be made and extensive testing conducted without impacting the performance of the current system.

Overall, the entire body of work is expected to cost $209 million over three financial years.

This $209 million is comprised of $107 million towards additional payroll staff who are required to deliver the fortnightly pay.

While the system is now operating much more accurately than it once was, it remains labour intensive and inefficient.

Queensland Health will keep on the additional payroll staff to keep the system running and eliminate the backlog.

The remaining costs include around $46 million to pay for software, contractors and experts to deliver the payroll improvements over the first half of 2011 and another $55 million for contractors, advisors and IT technicians to deliver the 18 month re-configuration which will see the system made more efficient and add enhanced features.

Mr Lucas said the Government had received the report at the end of September and had committed to undertaking extensive consultation with unions and staff, before being considered by Cabinet and released by the end of November.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank unions and staff for their involvement in this consultation process, their feedback, and – ultimately – their contribution to the Queensland Government’s response,” he said.

The full report can be found at http://www.health.qld.gov.au/qhpip

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