E-Payroll is an initiative that is part of President Bush’s Management Agenda. Coordinated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and managed by OPM, it is designed to save taxpayer dollars and to streamline government payroll operations. To bring modern services to the federal payroll operations, four e-Payroll winners were selected from the eight agencies that submitted proposals. Before the selection, there was a conglomeration of 26 federal payroll providers. Now pared down to four e-Payroll providers, OPM took the four and formed two partnerships:

1. the Department of the Interior’s NBC and the Department of Agriculture’s National Finance Center (NFC)
    
2. the Department of Defense’s Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)

In Phase I of this initiative, the NBC is migrating client agencies from their existing payroll system/provider to the NBC payroll system in a manner that is least disruptive and most beneficial to the client agency. At the NBC, project plans are in place and needed activity is underway to accommodate the new client migrations, as well as to maintain support and to continue to provide premier customer service to NBC’s existing clients.

During this busy migration process, the NBC’s staff has shown great dedication and professionalism working with our new clients, identifying new requirements, making systems changes, ensuring the success of migrations, and reacting to new emerging issues every day. It is truly a team effort requiring the most creative ideas from across the NBC organization - be it from our client conversion staff, to the systems staff, to datamart, to training, to operations, to the data center. All have “pitched in” and done whatever is necessary to get the job done. Literally, every day has presented new challenges which NBC’s people have consistently met.

Our new clients that have been successfully implemented onto the NBC systems are the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the DOT’s Surface Transportation Board in November 2003, the National Science Foundation (NSF) in May 2004, and the DOT’s Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (SLSC) in July 2004. In August 2004, the NBC implemented the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) without a glitch. The largest migration is currently underway; and in FY 2005, the NBC will bring on board the DOT. With this new increase, the NBC will pay over 300,000 employees.

In Phase II, the NBC’s role is to collaborate with the NFC in the development of simple, easy-to-use, cost-effective, standardized, integrated e-HR/Payroll services to support the mission and employees of the federal government.

An added benefit to all payroll clients is a Payroll Advisory Council that provides a consolidated forum, previously not available, to address common issues or solutions, opportunities to standardize, and next steps. The OPM chairs the meetings and arranges for experts and guest speakers to be on hand to address questions and resolve payroll-related issues. Most recently, this group met in Denver, Colorado, on August 10-12, 2004.

The NBC is extremely proud to have been chosen as one of the e-Payroll providers. Both the NBC and the NFC are committed to the goals of the e-Payroll initiative. Their partnership provides an emerging enterprise that combines the best payroll business practices from each organization in order to provide federal employees with the best payroll products and services.