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Image: Olivier Douliery
ATF’s Daniel Clark spent 58 straight hours converting HR Connect code to work with systems at the Justice Department, where his agency moved in January.
Between now and October, the Treasury Department will link most of its employees to a human resources system replacing dozens of scattered databases, some dating back to the 1960s.
HR Connect, a departmentwide system whose pilot began in 1999, is now available to 43,000 employees, or about 27 percent of its work force. By October, Treasury plans to increase that to about 63 percent, leaving a few IRS offices to be brought on board next spring.
Running on a secure departmental intranet, HR Connect lets employees and managers initiate, analyze or update personnel records and actions.
The latest addition is online filing for retirement, bypassing weeks-long delivery stops at Treasury management and HR offices that span several area codes and states.
Component agencies have begun to take down more than 90 aging, stovepiped personnel and payroll systems that have cost the department $53 million a year to operate.
“I’d have to go to four different systems to get information,” said Daniel Clark, a computer specialist in the personnel division at what was then the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, one of two Treasury agencies piloting HR Connect four years ago.
Lack of interoperability plagued the personnel specialists who often had to scour for critically needed information.
“We were getting more and more demands for data,” Clark said. “We live in an instant gratification society—as in, ‘I need that yesterday.’ Sorry, I’m busy yesterday.”
HR Connect, whose 10-year price tag totals $292.2 million, will save an estimated $195 million in fiscal 2004, not counting $150 million in discontinued or canceled HR programs.
Treasury projects a return of $2.31 on each dollar invested.
Five legacy systems in ATF alone have been terminated.
Treasury officials are now building assessment models, using return-on-investment software from a British company, Cedar Plc. The plan is to pinpoint savings from HR Connect down to each transaction and dollar.
“There will be bureau report cards of sorts,” said Todd Turner, director of Treasury’s Office of HR Enterprise Solutions. “They will say what actions are typically done and where executives can better optimize” HR Connect.
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