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Administrative Computing Policy

Current Status

Plan Review

Completed 2-21-2008

Human Resources: PeopleAdmin

Sponsor

Karen Hull - Interim Associate Vice Chancellor - Human Resources

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Human Resources: PeopleAdmin (login required)

Reviewers

Core contributors to this review included Janet Brown-Simmons (Chair of ADMAN), Pamela Davis (School of Education), Adam Getchell (College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences), Debbie Lauriano (IET), Bob Ono (IET), Dave Shelby (IET), and Thomas Wiley (UC Davis Extension). Comments were revised and expanded through additional discussion in the Dean’s Technology Council (DTC), Campus Council for Information Technology (CCFIT), Technology Infrastructure Forum (TIF), Senior Advisors, and other similar venues.

Feedback Received to Date (2-21-2008)

Revision History

1-29-08
Initial feedback
2-21-08
Revised to include IET recommendations, sponsor’s response to questions, and additional comments received after the initial posting

Contents

IET Recommendations

The most fundamental question raised during the review of the PeopleAdmin project is whether PeopleAdmin is a logical first step of an iterative approach to a full-featured, enterprise-level Human Resources Information System (HRIS) or a short-term, stranded investment that will effectively reduce the campus capacity to pursue a more strategic, long-term approach.

IET Recommendations to Resolve this Specific Issue

  1. Form a small group to quickly but substantively investigate and document the option of partnering with the UCD Health System to extend its implementation of PeopleSoft to the campus, and use the results of this investigation to inform a final decision about PeopleAdmin. IET and Health System IT leadership have offered to champion the technical aspects of such an investigation, which would require corresponding commitments from campus and Health System HR counterparts.
  2. Ensure support for PeopleAdmin from individuals and groups such as ADMAN, Senior Advisors, ACES, and TIF is informed by the possibility that the application could be replaced with a comprehensive HRIS within a relatively short (3-4 years) timeframe.
  3. Communicate the final decision on PeopleAdmin - including the rationale behind it and short and long-term expectations for campus stakeholders - clearly and at all levels.

Background Information Leading to these Recommendations

The project sponsor and those reviewers who advocate immediate steps to implement PeopleAdmin believe campus stakeholders will quickly benefit from the application's functionality – in particular the automation of recruitment and the streamlining of the classification processes – and point to the considerable effort and expense that have already gone into a multi-year business process mapping and application configuration effort. The project sponsor acknowledges the potential short-term nature of a PeopleAdmin investment but is also persuaded by the widespread support from campus stakeholders. At the same time, the sponsor believes that an HRIS may provide additional value to the campus and has made a commitment to continue strategic planning, suggesting a 3-month timeline to investigate partnering with the UCD Health System and its PeopleSoft application while simultaneously moving forward with PeopleAdmin.

Comments from other reviewers reflect a belief that PeopleAdmin and progress toward a comprehensive HRIS, such as PeopleSoft, are in practice mutually-exclusive. These reviewers believe that the time and effort required to implement PeopleAdmin will completely consume the same scarce resources needed for meaningful review of extending the UCD Health System's PeopleSoft implementation to the campus. Another concern is that the business process changes required by PeopleAdmin will leave campus HR and its stakeholders without the patience or the will to tolerate another set of process changes required to move to a comprehensive HRIS. 

From the standpoint of ensuring the most strategic approach to IT investments, it would be ideal for the decision about next steps to be based on a credible and widely-shared understanding about PeopleSoft as an alternative strategy. Whatever decision the sponsor makes, it seems critical that the expectations and consequences are clearly and widely communicated (recommendation #3).


What follows are specific reviewer comments submitted during the PPM 200-45 review of this project:

Reviewer Observations and Comments

  • HR has done a very good job of identifying the issues that are to be addressed by this solution; the business case and potential utility of the PeopleAdmin application are compelling. If successful, the system offers a lot of benefits for departments – staff and faculty included.
  • The ADMAN Executive Board specifically endorses PeopleAdmin, describing the system as “user friendly and a significant improvement from our current Job Machine II recruitment system.” A written letter of support further states:

“Although the new system requires some departmental business process changes initially, in general the advantages in compliance and convenience outweigh the initial start up effort. Many of the PeopleAdmin processes will ultimately streamline office staff workload and offer conveniences to the faculty and search committees that the current Job Machine cannot offer.  The ADMAN Executive Board’s interest and support for this to be a campus wide implementation has not wavered over the past few years. One of our consistent ADMAN board goals is the development of new systems that ‘talk’ to each other rather than one more new system to learn. The new PeopleAdmin offers that and more. We strongly support the implementation of PeopleAdmin and believe the campus should provide the resources required to make this a tool available to all departments.”

  • The project description addresses the most critical elements necessary for success in this type of project:
    • Strong support and direction from upper management
    • Partnering with stakeholders for ongoing process review and impact assessment
    • Willingness to divest from past practices
    • Recognition that cultural changes will be necessary to standardize, streamline and leverage industry standard technology
    • Change management that is ongoing, iterative, collaborative and evolutionary
  • The project description indicates that PeopleAdmin will “eliminate departmental cost to develop and maintain duplicative HR shadow systems.” While it could indeed lessen the number, scope and cost of shadow systems, it won’t eliminate them entirely. There will always be a need for some departmental functionality that a major system won’t provide.
  • One reviewer expressed concern that the “software as a service” model is inappropriate for University business, and that storing staff hiring data in a third-party repository is unnecessarily risky. Given the substantial ongoing financial commitment of for this system, this reviewer indicated that it’s worth considering whether existing internal systems could be rewritten or extended, or a solution used that does not require the hosting of sensitive personnel files with a third-party. While acknowledging that other UCs already use PeopleAdmin, the reviewer further noted, “widespread usage of a given system does not preclude significant problems with roll-out and functionality.”

Reviewer Suggestions and Advice

  • Official, timely information and updates about the status of this effort would greatly benefit departmental HR and IT units. Several departments and colleges are developing or have developed HR software components that could be impacted or supplanted by this application.
  • Perhaps the most significant area of risk to the campus will be management of the business changes to HR and the campus. Fundamental changes appear to be needed in both central and departmental business practices. Managing such changes can be challenging, costly, and controversial in a project of this scope.
    • The project description wisely notes that the process mapping and associated business changes required for this project should be geared towards industry standard HR approaches. Given the present uncertainty regarding a future, more comprehensive HR Information System, any near-term process changes will need to be transferable to alternate solutions. Thus, the considerable business process efforts associated with this project should be foundational and vendor-neutral, rather than PeopleAdmin-centric.
    • Managers should prepare to address organizational areas where change is less welcome, both within central HR and in external departments.
    • Prospects for positive outcomes can be improved with communication, statements of direction/policy, lots of training, and support from IT staff and supervisors.
    • It would build confidence among stakeholders to have more detailed information regarding:
      • Business process changes that have already been made to support the new models
      • Additional process changes that are needed/anticipated but have yet to be made
    • Be prepared for initial period (3-6 months) of reduced productivity and possible employee turnover, followed by increased productivity and return on investment.
    • A pilot would be very valuable in ironing out business process glitches. In addition, given the significant process and model changes needed, detailed “walkthroughs” should be conducted internally prior to any pilot. These will help ensure that all involved understand their new roles and that all underlying process changes have been successfully identified and implemented. (This would be in addition to and separate from testing the system itself.)
  • The oversight structure that is set up for the implementation should pay special attention to providing adequate training opportunities for the campus at large.
  • The cost of the system seems reasonable, especially if access is distributed out to department HR units.  Cost of training/support should be expected to increase as departments begin to use the system.

Questions, Potential Gaps, and Requests for Clarification

Social Security Numbers

Reviewers expressed concern regarding the use of Social Security Numbers.

Back-end Database

Reviewers asked several questions about the back end database.

Decision Support Reporting

Reviewers observed that the initial implementation does not appear to provide a customer-centric reporting mechanism, such as a decision support system. This should be addressed prior to implementation, as it can be much more difficult and costly to add such functionality later. Ideally, departments should have access to pre-defined reports, historical information, ad-hoc reporting tools, and raw departmental data for custom reporting. Providing this essential functionality will likely add some one-time and ongoing costs to the project – programming staff and hardware.

Campus IT Security Coordinator Review

The project essentially outsources selective HR functions to PeopleAdmin, and thus security requirements go beyond the campus Cyber-safety security practices. Any contract with PeopleAdmin must incorporate the applicable provisions outlined in http://www.ucop.edu/purchserv/rfp/tvl_oba/oba_att10.pdf. This document includes contractor requirements for:

  • Abidance to state law and university policy
  • Prohibiting contractor disclosure or unauthorized use of university data, including the sharing of university data with subcontractors without university authorization
  • Protecting university data in a manner consistent with commercial security standards or as the contractor protects its corporate data
  • Returning or destruction of all university data at the termination of any agreement
  • Reporting to the university of any security breach leading to unauthorized access to university data
  • Granting the university the right to review any records/logs pertaining to access to university data
  • In addition, any agreement for third-party application hosting should require:
  • All university data transmittal be conducted over secure network protocols
  • Any data files containing university data be encrypted, via AES or equivalent standards,
  • Database fields defined by the university as critical and sensitive be encrypted using commercially accepted encryption technology
  • All contractor backup media containing university data be encrypted
  • The deployment of an annual vulnerability scans of contractor Web applications and systems hosting university data. The contractor must report to the university the presence of any high-severity security exposures affecting university data along with a remediation schedule.