October 25, 2001
Online form to ease payroll information
Soon the campus will watch the PAF go “Poof.”
PAF stands for Personnel Action Form, a document known perhaps too well by many administrators. The new Online Payroll Update System (OPUS) will replace both the PAF – a complex form that requires several signatures from people scattered all across campus – and the Distribution Change System.
The heart of OPUS is an online system, available at https://prp.admin.washington.edu/opus/securid. There’s also an online resource guide, designed to help users obtain the necessary approvals and documentation before initiating a personnel-related action. The guide is available at http://www.washington.edu/user/hr_payroll/guide. With these changes, the individuals responsible for initiating a personnel action will actually be performing the action online.
The public unveiling of OPUS culminates more than three years of work by a team of eight dedicated volunteers, along with three staff, who have been meeting once a week to develop a new system for handling changes to payroll information. The team “invested countless hours collaborating with technical developers, breaking down the separate silos of information, dispelling institutional folklore, and tirelessly obtaining feedback from users throughout the development process,” says Weldon Ihrig, executive vice president.
OPUS is the most complex application so far from the USER Project, supported by the University Initiatives Fund. It exemplifies the USER Project vision of building an information-based environment in which people have access to the data they need, when and where they need it, in order to make informed decisions.
“The level of commitment of this team has been truly unusual and very special,” says Patricia Woehrlin, USER Project leader. “They became so involved that they have written the help text within the application. And they have agreed to stay on as an ad hoc group to address user feedback following the unveiling.”
Rhonda Lahey, who has led the team, says people were attracted and stayed “because they saw the opportunity to change history at the UW. And their supervisors deserve credit for allowing these people to attend team meetings three hours a week for over three years. This is one of the very best experiences I’ve had working here. This team has been extremely thorough and has consulted extensively with end users of the system.”
While OPUS is available now, the project is not yet ended. Woehrlin says that another major effort is under way to eliminate another “popular” form on campus – the 220 form, which employees use to record their leave information.
Team members include Lahey, Academic Human Resources; Danae Hollinger, Academic Human Resources; Joni McDonald, Payroll Office; Colleen McKay, Periodontics; Barbara Peterson, Pathology; Gary Prohaska, Information Systems; Tina Schulstad, Physiology and Biophysics; Kirk Udovich, Information Systems; Susan VanderVaate, University Honors Program; Susan Williams, English; and Juliette Dong Yamane, Human Resources and Payroll Initiative, USER Project.
Please see accompanying story.
