A council committee Tuesday is expected to discuss the status of a project to update the city of Los Angeles’ payroll system — a process that has been slow, cost millions of dollars and caused some legal troubles.
The Los Angeles City Council’s Personnel, Audits and Hiring Committee is set to convene in a special meeting early Tuesday. The three-member committee will hear from City Controller Kenneth Mejia and the Information Technology Agency on the matter.
The payroll upgrade project began in 2020 when the council at the time agreed to spend about $62.1 million for several contracts to migrate the city’s outdated, custom-built payroll computers known as “PaySR” to a new program developed by Workday,
The new system is intended to merge payroll and human resources data, according to city documents.
According to a report filed in April by the city’s Information Technology Agency, the Human Resources and Payroll Project is intended to replace the 22-year-old payroll system, known as PaySr, with Workday. The change is necessary because PaySr is outdated, and prone to cybersecurity issues.
City officials aimed to implement Workday at the end of December 2021, but given staffing shortages and other challenges caused by COVID-19 it was approved for a “phased rollout.”
Phase 1 of the project went live in May 2022 with hiring and onboarding serving as key features of the new system, but implementation of Phase 2 fell behind schedule with a target date for December 2023.
Phase 2, also known as Go-Live, was set for December 2023, adding tools to Workday related to absence management, benefits administration, compensation, time tracking, payroll, among other things. Again, due to complications, this part of the project was pushed back until June 2024.
Due to the complexity of the project and time needed to train city employees on how to use the system, multiple departments had raised concerns about readiness, according to city documents.
The report noted that the Go-Live was set for June 16, followed by period of support through Sept. 13, where the entire payroll project team would monitor the new system, review and resolve issues, as well as provide phone and video conference help sessions.