On October 16, 2005, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) went live on the National Business Center's (NBC) Federal Personnel Payroll System (FPPS) and began to be serviced by the NBC's Payroll Operations Division. This implementation not only completed the phased migration of the Department of Transportation (DOT), but also brought to a close the 3-year-long planning and implementation portion of the e-Payroll Initiative, a component of President Bush's Management Agenda.
Under e-Payroll, four agencies were assigned by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to the NBC for migration to its payroll environment. With the successful implementation of the FAA, all four agencies have been migrated to that environment, making the NBC the first major payroll provider to complete the e-Payroll Initiative. In November 2003, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was the first to be migrated, followed by the National Science Foundation in May 2004. In August of 2004, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's nearly 20,000 employees were migrated. The DOT, the largest organization with close to 54,000 employees, was split into two parts: the FAA and non-FAA. The agencies that comprised the non-FAA component were implemented between November 2003 and April 2005, and now FAA is complete, as well.
Despite the disparate payroll systems of the implemented agencies, the NBC migrated all clients on schedule, while maintaining a 99.9 percent payroll accuracy rate. Dennis Locke, former Chief of the Client Liaison and Product Development Division, firmly believes the accomplishment of the e-Payroll Initiative is attributable to three things: the trust of the client, the commitment of NBC employees throughout the organization, and unwavering government-wide support. The e-Payroll Initiative has resulted in economies of scale for the NBC's client base.
Currently, the NBC is working to convert 30 years of DOT legacy personnel data and 10 years of payroll information to Datamart, the NBC's data warehouse. Originally, this service was not part of the e-Payroll Initiative, but the NBC wanted to accommodate the needs of the DOT. The conversion to Datamart is projected to be accomplished in April 2006. The NBC will continue to report their "lessons learned" to the OPM, as had happened throughout the initiative. Additionally, the NBC is aggressively working to implement multiple clients who were initially assigned by the OPM to other providers. According to Barb McCuskey, Manager of the Client Conversion Program Management Branch, the team responsible for quickly and efficiently migrating clients, the clients of other providers are coming to the NBC because of the NBC's reputation for customer service excellence.
Although the migration responsibilities under the e-Payroll Initiative are complete, the NBC will continue their efforts to find new and better ways to support the administrative needs of Federal clients.
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