U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

Interview with National Business Center's
LC Williams
October 2006

LC Williams, Associate Director, Federal Personnel Payroll Systems and Services Directorate (FPPSSD), NBC

At the June MAESC meeting, the HR LOB announced that it planned to feature the SSCs in future issues of the HR LOB Communications Letter.  The SSCs are essential components in realizing the HR LOB vision, and are represented in the Shared Service Center Advisory Council (SSCAC).   This month features an interview with LC Williams, Associate Director, Federal Personnel Payroll Systems and Services Directorate (FPPSSD) at the National Business Center.

HR LOB:  Describe your experiences in cross-servicing other Government agencies.
Mr. Williams:  The NBC’s Human Resource Center of Excellence has a proven track record of providing a high quality payroll system and operational services to Federal client agencies for over 30 years.  We offer a comprehensive suite of services to customers with widely varying requirements and environments including personnel transaction processing and a full array of payroll operations services (debt management, time and attendance, payroll audit and research, help desk services for users and employees, payroll accounting, back pay and settlement processing, complete W2 and W2C processing, ability for paid daily payments, etc.), all included in our base service rate.  The NBC provides payroll clients with several options for time and attendance (T&A) reporting.  Additionally, we offer HR operations or “back office” services.   The NBC currently provides payroll and HR services to 38 government agencies with varied missions ranging from the very large, like the Department of Transportation and Social Security Administration, to the very small, such as the Harry Truman Scholarship Foundation and Artic Research Commission.  We have experience implementing multiple large or small customers on-time and within budget.  The cornerstone of our experience is the consistent high customer satisfaction which has resulted in a 100 percent customer retention rate and continuous growth based on reputation for excellence.  We believe we are “on the right track”, but in the words of the great Will Rodgers, “even if you are on the right track, you will still get run over if you just sit there.”  Thus, we are working to improve our services through implementing a world-class contact center; seeking ISO 9000 certification and continual process improvement; shifting to an Activity Base Cost model for more accurate accounting and pricing of products; and continue to get a clean audit opinion.

HR LOB:  What are the unique services your agency provides to customer agencies?
Mr. Williams:  We provide the only integrated Human Resource/payroll system in the government eliminating two systems and the interfaces between them.  This eliminates the necessity for hours of reconciliation between the two systems and saves our clients and our payroll operation innumerable resources in time, labor, and critical dollars.  Our Federal Personnel and Payroll System is the only system with an automated retroactive personnel/payroll processing capability that triggers automatic pay adjustments based on personnel or time and attendance changes.  As an Human Resource Line of Business Center of Excellence, we enjoy a distinct advantage in that we stand alone in being able to currently offer all of the core services outlined by OPM’s short-term concept of operations (personnel action processing, time and attendance, payroll processing, labor cost distribution, benefits processing and workforce analytics).  Additionally, we offer HR operations or “back office” services.  The NBC reputation for excellence is validated in our unique selection by OMB and OPM as a Center for Excellence for the Human Resources and Financial Management Line of Business, as well as one of only four payroll providers for the federal government.  The NBC offers a full suite of financial and administrative systems and services (Financial, HR, Acquisitions, Drug Testing, etc.) for one stop shopping and integrated reporting through our Datamart.

HR LOB:  What are your key successes in the last few years?
Mr. Williams:  We successfully migrated all the new clients to our integrated personnel/payroll system on-time and on-budget as required by the President’s Management Agenda e-Payroll initiative.  We are continuing to add new customers due to customer service excellence.  By virtue of our continued growth and economies of scale, our customers have enjoyed a 6.5% decrease in cost over the last couple of years, while at the same time experienced a significant increase in the functionality of the Federal Personnel and Payroll System due to continuous upgrades.  We opened a satellite payroll services site in Atlanta GA, incorporating our customers’ payroll technicians to assist with the transition of personnel and to smooth the migration to our personnel/pay system.  We established a Customer Executive Advisory Board to help guide the development of new products and services in partnership with our current clients.  We began the journey of adding to the long term service offering required by OPM by developing the Federal Employee Benefits Systems.  This self-service system allows our client employees 24/7 access to view their total benefits and accomplish instantaneous calculations for retirement purposes.

An added benefit is that the system can maintain employee personal contacts information for one primary and two secondary contacts—invaluable for contingency operations.  We received approval for OMB to be a full service HSPD-12 provider to federal agencies.  We are positioned to ensure other government agencies meet the OMB mandates for obtaining the Personal Identification Verification (PIV) II compliant smart cards.  We will provide our customers a secure, paperless, end-to-end HSPD-12 integrated solution linking human resources, entrance on duty, employee provisioning, off-boarding, and e-authentication for access management.

HR LOB:  What are your challenges in the coming years?
Mr. Williams:  We operate in a Working Capital Fund environment as established under the Economy Act, which extremely limits our ability to fund modernization investments for our systems and services.   We are only funded enough from our customer base to recover our costs.  As with any business, systems have to be refreshed and products updated to stay competitive in the market place.  This limitation hampers our ability to become even more efficient and help offer better government services across the board.

Public/Private sector competition; having to institute infrastructure and business processes to compete with private businesses – this is a new arena for the federal government and we will have to invest in similar process as already established with the private sector in order to be competitive and responsive to the needs of other government clients.  The private sector does not have the funding limitations of the Economy Act and is better positioned with resources to respond to RFPs than the Shared Service Centers.  We will have to put these infrastructures in place with limited opportunities for funding.

Balancing growth and customer service.  The NBC prides itself on its excellent customer service and is committed to maintaining the highest levels even during periods of expansion.  As we expand our HRLOB and HSPD-12 service offering to current as well as new clients, we have to maintain our cornerstone for customer excellence.  Our excellent reputation is the foundation of why we exist today and it’s the foundation of why we will exist tomorrow, with innovative products and services to our valued federal clients.  The NBC motto to our clients is, “You handle the core mission; we take care of the rest!”