May 23, 2002 – The V.I. government is about to make radical changes in the way it hires workers.
Notices of Personnel Action, or NOPAs, are notorious for getting lost, shuffled and sidetracked down an array of bureaucratic gauntlets. But the head of the government's Personnel Division says that's all about to change.
On Wednesday, Joanne U. Barry, Personnel director, and her hand-picked team of information technicians demonstrated the new computerized NOPA system at Personnel's computer training lab in the GERS Building on St. Thomas.
Right now Personnel officials say it takes two to three weeks to walk the documents for a new hire through the system. With the new computerized system, Barry said, the time from the hiring decision to the first day on the job can be cut to two days or less.
"The greatest savings will be a saving of time. We will be able to bring people onto the system much faster," she said.
Entered into the database for each new hire is the person's name, work start date, position and salary. The electronic records include space to enter job history, union affiliation, emergency contact numbers and assignment of benefits. If the applicant had to take a qualifying test, the date of the test and the results can be entered.
Barry says the electronic processing will reduce the chances of NOPA's getting lost on a desk, separated in transit from one office to another, and/or held up in the system because they're incomplete. Once the process is completed, the system generates a paper record to go into the employee's personnel file.
Streamlining the NOPA process is part of a total revamping of the government's human resources system, Barry said. That revamping was the primary goal she set when she took the job three and a half years ago, she said.
In addition to speeding up the hiring-to-working time, the system gives Personnel staff the ability to track documents and see which decision makers — department heads, the Personnel director and the governor — have given the approvals needed to complete the process. Personnel specialists will be able to use electronic files to check the status of whether the paperwork is with the agency head, the governor or the fiscal officer who puts the new employee on the payroll.
Creeping NOPA's have kept the government from filling critical positions in a timely manner. Teachers miss the opening days of school or teach for weeks without being paid; hospital workers can't provide health care; fire stations close for lack of manpower. Barry said Personnel often gets the blame, but much of the time it's not the division's fault — "although Personnel is ultimately responsible for the delay."
The folks who process NOPA's have had a day-long orientation to the new system. Kenneth Hermon, Personnel associate director, has been conducting the classes in a computer learning center set up for training purposes. Additional computer training is planned for Personnel specialists on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
Automation of the V.I. government's human resources system was called for in a federal audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Interior. "That audit was issued in March 1999. It was a follow-up of a previous audit that was done in 1992," regional audit manager Arnold Van Beverhoudt of the U.S. Office of Inspector General said.
While there was no specific finding about the Notices of Personnel Action, Van Beverhoudt said, Interior wanted Personnel to address problems with the qualifying tests currently in use, calling them antiquated. But the federal officials did specifically call for the computerization of personnel records that is now under way. Van Beverhoudt said by the time he published the audit, Personnel was already at work modernizing the system.
The Planning and Natural Resources Department is a pilot agency for testing and implementing the project. Its workers will be the first to have access to their own personnel files through automated "ePAAS" accounts that are expected to make their debut next month.
Utilizing ePAAS, employees "can go onto the computer, log on and access their information as contained in the V.I. Personnel system," information specialist Kenneth Belle said as he gave a demonstration of the system. "They will be able to look into the system and see what their official status is. For instance, did they really get their status change, or are they just performing extra duties?"
Barry said she chose DPNR as the pilot area because it is a mid-sized department in which some workers are under collective bargaining agreements and some positions are federally funded — the type of details that record keepers must be alert to. Converting DPNR, she said, will be a dress rehearsal for taking on some of the larger departments, notably Education.
Once the conversion of a department or agency is complete, the Personnel information team will undertake the task of scanning all paper records into the electronic system. But Barry said she's planning to hang onto the paper until she's no longer legally bound to keep it around.
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