Currently, 22 internal government providers deliver Federal civilian employee payroll services for the executive branch. The four largest -- the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture -- handle over 80 percent of the total civilian payroll, serving nearly 1.9 million employees covered by more than 190 different pay plans. Three of the four major providers report that new systems are urgently needed, but system implementation is expensive and takes years to complete.
The E-Payroll initiative seeks to simplify and standardize Federal HR/payroll policies and procedures and better integrate payroll, human resources, and finance functions. The initiative will:
- Consolidate Federal payroll processing to the existing systems of two or three cross-service providers.
- Exercise central governance over payroll policy to standardize and simplify payroll procedures.
- Leverage recent technology investments across Federal agencies to more quickly modernize payroll service delivery within carefully crafted enterprise architecture for human resources and payroll activities.
The ability to consolidate and standardize payroll data across the Federal government will improve the link between performance and budgets, and improve financial management by providing both program managers and finance officers with information needed to make well-informed decisions. Additionally, payroll service provider consolidation will generate cost savings through economies of volume, provide additional cost avoidance by limiting capital system modernization activities across government, and promote standardization and unified service delivery.
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