State Executes 2nd Phase of Payroll Modernization Project

Gov. David Ige reports the successful roll-out of the second phase of the state’s payroll modernization effort. This second phase included an additional 20,000 employees of the Legislature, Judiciary, Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Executive branch departments. The first payday through the new, modernized payroll system to this second group of employees took place on Aug. 3.

The first phase covered about 1,300 employees from the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) and the Department of Human Resources and Development (DHRD) and was successfully implemented in May.

“This effort was successfully executed by a united, highly-engaged state workforce that stepped forward to implement our vision of a modernized payroll system,” said Gov. Ige. “The system transforms the way the state and its employees conduct business—creating a more efficient and effective government for state taxpayers.”

For the past 50 years, state employees worked with a labor and time-intensive, paper-based, manual payroll process that was run on a legacy mainframe system.

Gov. Ige and the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) recognized the vital need to modernize its system.

“Leveraging the unified efforts of state leadership, management and employees, the state designed a robust system on an Oracle PeopleSoft platform and implemented the project in staged groups,” said Comptroller Roderick Becker. “This IT project has been a substantial undertaking that is on-time and on-budget.”

The State of Hawai‘i now utilizes a stable and efficient Enterprise Resource Planning system used by many other states and municipalities, and is now reaping the transformational impact it provides including:

• The most accurately computed payroll in more than 50 years—taxes and latest tax law changes are applied, and deductions are properly handled
• World-class facility and system which provide the highest level of data security for the personal information of all State of Hawai‘i employees
• True direct deposit capabilities—a first-time convenience now available to more than 20,000 employees
• The largest deployment of employee self-service from desktop or mobile devices, which allow employees to view pay statements and update their own accounts and profiles
• Environmentally-conscious—eliminating millions of sheets of paper through the significant reduction of paper-driven processes

The remaining group of employees from the Department of Education and the University of Hawai‘i will transition to the new payroll system later this year.