Los Angeles County has replaced a thirty-year-old human resource management system as part of a multi-phase project to bring its financial and resource planning into the 21st century. The new Web-based HR Payroll System will institute several key changes to the County’s processes, making it easier to adjust timekeeping, payroll and benefits as needed.

According to the County’s lead vendor on the project, CGI Technologies and Solutions, the new system is designed to meet the unique needs of government HR managers and their stakeholders. For instance, union contracts and the furthering decline of the economy create furloughs, shortened work days and other changes to what is usually considered a steady work schedule. In addition, some state and local governments have needed to readjust benefits and employee contribution rates, adding complexity to the workload of HR staffs, already taxed by layoffs and cutbacks.

“The unique built-for-government attributes of CGI’s AMS Advantage ERP solution allow us to approach complex financial and human resource system replacement projects in a spirit of configuration, not customization,” Dave Delgado, Vice-President of CGI’s Public Sector West, said in a statement.

Some of the changes made to the current system include a transition to a semi-monthly payroll and basing pay on scheduled work days instead of calendar days. The online capabilities of the system will help streamline data entry, processing and tracking, while improving reporting and audit functions, the company said.

Assistant Auditor-Controller of Los Angeles County, Robert Davis, indicated the transition of more than 100,000 employees to the new system was smooth and that the new HR system will compliment the County’s broader efforts to align its enterprise resource planning project that includes financial, budgeting and procurement solutions.

“The overall success of the County’s effort is a testament to the strength of the implementation team both at the County and CGI,” Mr. Davis said.

Florida has announced a new website – Florida Gulf Recovery Jobs, a site which will allow job seekers to locate and apply for positions created to manage the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The site will act as a dedicated portal through the state’s official online job bank Employ Florida Marketplace.  The Marketplace which has been live since 2005, is currently listing over 3,500 positions related to the oil spill response effort along with other job openings across the state.

Florida Gulf Recovery Jobs is a joint venture between Workforce Florida Inc. and the Agency for Workforce Innovation.  These two entities will work together with 24 regional workforce boards statewide to coordinate everything through the single website.  The state hopes that the new site will be the go-to location for job seekers and employers for employment information that is fully verified.

The site will also serve as a place to house and use training information for the specialized skills needed for many of these positions. Over 2,400 workers have already been trained for oil spill related positions. The state also set up 93 local One-Stop Career Centers which work in tandem with the site to provide Floridians with employment and training information.

“Immediate access to recovery-related job openings provides Floridians the opportunity to help our state while supporting their families and communities,” said Governor Crist. “Our beautiful Sunshine State remains open for business, and Florida Gulf Recovery Jobs is the latest example of our coordinated efforts to ensure preparedness and strengthen our economy.”

Floridians can also call 1-877-362-5034 to learn more about available jobs related to response and recovery efforts.

Yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger announced that California has reached agreements with four state employee unions which will move the state closer to comprehensive pension reform for state employees. The new agreements include significant measures such as requiring employees to contribute at least 10% to their pensions one of the highest contributions in the nation and rolling back a pension increase enacted in 1999. The Governor hopes that these measures will cut back on the state’s ballooning pension costs.

The agreements also include changes to the retirement formulas used to calculate pension payments for new employees such as additions to the number of years a new employee has to work before they receive full benefits and adding additional years to the final retirement compensation calculation in order to avoid pension spiking in the last year of work.

According to the Governor, the current formulas are causing continued increases in pension costs, that coupled with the ongoing budgetary problems the state faces are forcing the need reform.

Even while the reforms passed, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) voted to increase the state’s required contributions towards pensions by an estimated $600 million in fiscal year 2010-11.

Along with pension reform, the unions also agreed to a proposed employee compensation savings for next year which will work out to be one day of unpaid personal leave per month during the next fiscal year. All told, the days off will amount to the equivalent of a five percent pay cut. The Administration is also moving forward with a five percent reduction in the cost of the state workforce payroll through Executive Order S-01-10, which requires all department directors to reduce their payrolls by 5 percent. These agreements are expected to save the state $72 million. If similar agreements are reached with the state’s eight other employee unions, state savings in FY 2010-11 would total $2.2 billion, $1.2 billion General Fund.

The four agreements announced will cover 23,000 employees represented by the California Association of Highway Patrolmen (CAHP), California Department of Forestry Firefighters (CDFF), California Association of Psychiatric Technicians (CAPT) and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

“I am absolutely committed to getting pension reform done because we cannot continue down this unsustainable path that has taxpayers on the hook for $500 billion in debt,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “I applaud these four unions for stepping up and taking these first steps in helping to reform our state’s out-of-balance pensions and I encourage other public employee unions to negotiate on behalf of their members and California taxpayers. I will continue to fight for taxpayers and work with any union that comes forward and is ready to negotiate reforms.”

Last week, Maryland, Illinois and Connecticut all announced new job creation as well as jobs saved in their states through a combination of funding, training and incentive programs.

Maryland was able to create and save a total of 13,821 jobs through the use of its American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding. As of March 31, 2010, Maryland has expended $612,651,363 of the $2.19 billion awarded to the state through ARRA thus far for job savings and creation activities under section 1512 of the Act. In addition to 1512 funding, Maryland received $196 million in federal Medicaid matching funds and $39 million in Family Safety Net programs leading to increases in TANF, adoption, child support, and food stamp assistance.

Maryland offers a full breakdown of how and where jobs were created or saved through its Recovery Act website StateStat.

Illinois announced a new program – “Put Illinois to Work” (PIW). The program is set up through 577 employers across the state, who have agreed to hire more than 3,886 workers for the first phase of the PIW program. PIW will allow state residents to be placed in subsidized employment positions at one of the 577 employers for up to six months, while they learn new skills.

The state estimates that over the life of the program 15,000 jobs will be created statewide, with the hope that many of these subsidized employees will find permanent employment at the end of the six month trial. The state is actively looking for additional employer participants in the program and has created a website highlighting both opportunities and requirements.

Connecticut also passed a sweeping jobs bill designed to create new areas of employment as well as hiring incentives across the state. Some of the bigger plans in the bill include – up to $500,000 in loans and lines of credit for small businesses; tax credits and exemptions for income, machinery purchases, insurance, and fuel; and up to $150,000 in pre-seed financing and technical services to businesses developing innovative concepts.

The state will also be establishing new education and training initiatives through the bill.

In this year’s annual Building the Broadband Economy Summit, the Intelligent Community Forum looks at how cities across the globe are tying educational requirements to workforce needs, as jobs ebb and flow to disparate parts of the world according to the availability of low-cost, high-speed communications technology.

The unemployment rate in the United States is 9.9 percent, according to the latest figures by the Department of Labor. And nearly 7 million of those jobless have gone more than twenty-seven weeks without work. Billions of dollars more are likely to be flushed through the economy over the coming months, through unemployment insurance or “jobs bills,” to help sections of the economy emerge from the Great Recession.

But according to Louis Zacharilla and the Intelligent Community Forum, a global think tank, the task of creating lasting jobs in an ever-changing world has to be more closely aligned with the educational system that produces the workforce. Mr. Zacharilla and his colleagues at ICF are gearing up for their annual Building the Broadband Economy Summit this week to announce the 2010 Intelligent Community of the Year. This year’s theme is “The Education Last Mile: Closing the Gap between School and Work.”

“We are seeing a requirement for the education systems throughout the world to produce a type of person that was not required 20 years ago, as we came to the end of the industrial age,” Mr. Zacharilla said in an interview.

The concept of a knowledge worker has been around since the 1970’s when Peter Drucker coined the term, but only recently has the world seen his predictions come true. According to a white paper produced by ICF, the manufacturing sector of the world’s economy has lost a significant amount its job-generating power and that the skills gap between secondary and higher education is widening in terms of earning potential. “For citizens with a poor educational history and few skills, [the change to a knowledge-based workforce] has been devastating,” the report says. “In earlier decades, they would have found work in manufacturing and earned wages that would have put them solidly in the middle class.”

The new worker, according to Mr. Zacharilla, needs to not only have the skills to perform in the new knowledge workforce, but she needs to be able to achieve at significant levels of skill performance.

“It’s important that the workforce look to the educational systems of the world to help close the gap and produce people that are capable of thinking in ways that are consistent with the requirements of the modern community.”

For the past decade, as part of its annual awards process, ICF has been studying the modern community and identifying cities throughout the world that are setting the bar for innovation in the Broadband Economy. The Broadband Economy is how ICF explains the rapid expansion of low-cost, high-speed communications and information technology within a global context. Every year, communities are chosen from a group of Smart21 Communities for their integration of broadband, and related technologies, with community development and citizen outreach strategies.

This year’s Top Seven winners included two US-based communities – Arlington County, Virginia and Dublin, Ohio. They were joined by cities in Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea, Estonia and the UK. Mr. Zacharilla said the primary strength of this year’s Top Seven Communities has been their concerted efforts to increase innovation. He said that local government officials have been at the heart of successful efforts to bring once failing and old economies into the 21st century – and they are leveraging private partnerships to build upon enabling policies.

“What we’ve arrived at now, is a Top Seven that have enshrined innovation and are beginning to absorb it into the DNA of their cultures.”

One example comes from Ottawa, Ontario where a reported five new businesses are started every week. “People say ‘wow,’” Zacharilla explained, “But I say ‘why isn’t everyone else doing it?’ because that is going to be the requirement for every local economy going forward.”

“Jobs have to come from somewhere, so creating five businesses every seven days shouldn’t be something that gets an exclamation point behind it. It should be the standard.”

Moving forward, the global think tank is trying to understand education’s role in the Broadband Economy and identifying some of those cities that have laid a high-speed communications infrastructure, but are now fostering a workforce to maximize the use of that fiber backbone.

“Now we’re trying to understand weather the educational system can be disintermediated by knowledge.”

According to Mr. Zacharilla, some communities are reassessing their continuing education model and trying to understand if rather than be a supplemental to the tradition of secondary and higher education, it could be part of a “twenty-year educational package.”

With the understanding that most people will have five to seven new jobs over a lifetime, and each of those jobs requiring new levels of education and new forms of training, conversations are emerging in some communities about developing a model where parents can buy an educational product upfront, at a discount, and make it part of an ecosystem, Zacharilla said.

“People are working hard to solve the systemic problem of not looking at the workforce and tying it back into the educational requirements.”

ICF’s BBE Summit “The Education Last Mile: Closing the Gap between School and Work” begins Wednesday May 19 through May 21 where the 2010 Intelligent Community of the Year will be announced at the Polytechnic University at its Metrotech campus in Brooklyn, New York. For more information, click here.

In response to the National Broadband Plan, released in March by the Federal Communications Commission, a nonprofit association dedicated to entrepreneur education announced the formation of a public/private partnership to encourage broadband adoption by US small businesses. Known as the “Counselors to America’s Small Business,” SCORE has teamed with a group of tech industry heavyweights, the FCC and the Small Business Administration. Dave Waldrop, Director of Strategic Alliances at Microsoft, spoke to CivSource about his company’s role and the broader goal of unleashing the power of broadband to the nation’s small businesses.

According to the SCORE website, more than nearly 12,500 volunteer counselors provide individual mentoring and business workshops for start-ups and budding entrepreneurs. In addition to the face-to-face curriculum, the group provides online resources and most recently announced the formation of a broadband consortium.

“We share the same viewpoint that small business is a vital part of the US economy, and good, rich access to the Internet is critical,” Dave Waldrop, Director of Small Business Marketing at Microsoft said in an interview. “Pretty much every small business needs rich access to internet connectivity – for promoting, marketing, e-commerce, or if its simply for finding information. Driving access and utilization of broadband is an important component to the nation’s economic recovery. “

For their part, Microsoft is donating financial resources, as well as access to a broad array of products and an ecosystem of Microsoft small business partners and specialists. “Our network of 300,000 partners includes independent companies that provide technology, sales, and services advice to small businesses. It’s a channel we’ve been nurturing since Microsoft has been in business.”

Perhaps Microsoft’s most important contribution, Mr. Waldrop suggested, is being able to leverage the combined knowledge of their network and his company’s own small business expertise in helping SCORE develop a practical curriculum to get small businesses the technical capabilities they need.

“Our bigger value is that Microsoft can be part of the effort to educate and be part of a process to develop curriculum that their mentors can provide to small business. We can help provide knowledge on how to adopt and leverage broadband to start, grow and build their businesses.”

Mr. Waldrop said the SCORE partnership and the broadband consortium is a natural extension of Microsoft’s own small business outreach.

“There’s good synergy between us and SCORE’s charter, especially with the investments we have made to develop our small business channel and small business specialists.”

Other companies involved with the SCORE broadband consortium include AT&T, Best Buy, Cisco, Constant Contact, Google, HP, Intuit, Skype and Time Warner Cable Business Class. For information on SCORE, visit www.score.org.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that another $267 million has been awarded to twenty-eight non-profit organizations to help establish support programs for state and local health information technology adopters. The health IT Regional Extension Centers (RECs) are expected to provide nationwide outreach and technical support services to at least 100,000 primary care providers and hospitals within two years, HHS officials said.

The addition of twenty-eight RECs brings the total number of centers up to sixty, with more than $375 million already doled out through the program. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the health IT industry is expected to support tens of thousands of jobs at the local level, ranging from nurses and pharmacy techs to IT technicians and trainers. The RECs will provide technical assistance and share best practices with local practitioners to help accelerate the adoption of electronic health records.

“Health care in our country is community-based. Today’s awards represent our ongoing commitment to make sure that health providers have the necessary support within their communities to maximize the use of health IT to improve the care they provide to their patients,” said Secretary Sebelius.

In a meeting with local leaders last month, Sec. Sebelius said the RECs are designed to be “boots on the ground” to help implement technology and workforce strategies to expand meaningful use of EHRs. So far, HHS in combination with the Department of Labor, have set aside nearly $1 billion for grants to train, hire and retain qualified technicians and nurses who will lead America’s health system into the 21st Century. And today’s effort is part of a $2 billion effort to modernize healthcare through information technology by 2014.

In addition to the over $600 million obligated for RECs, today’s winners, along with the thirty-two announced last February, will be able to compete for nearly $25 million in two-year supplemental awards, meant to focus on critical access and rural hospitals.

“Regional extension centers will provide the needed hands-on, field support for all health care providers to advance the rapid adoption and use of health IT,” Dr. David Blumenthal, national coordinator for health information technology, said in a statement. “RECs are a vital part of our overall efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of health care through the effective use of health IT.”

For a complete list of REC grant recipients, click here.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of New York recently announced plans to offer free technology training through Microsoft’s Elevate America program. Nearly 100,000 Microsoft online training and certification vouchers will be offered to unemployed residents of the two states, at no cost to the recipients. New York and Massachusetts join thirteen other states’ efforts to provide technology training.

“This public-private partnership is exactly the kind of innovative program we need to help our workforce advance,” Governor Patrick said in a statement. “Massachusetts residents will benefit from the opportunity to strengthen their computer skills as we continue lead the way in businesses that rely heavily upon technology.”

Through One-Stop Career Centers across the two states, unemployed residents will be able to take e-learning courses for Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, or IT Professional and Developer level courses. Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 certification exams will also be available through the program.

In an interview last summer with CivSource, Gail Thomas-Flynn, vice president of State and Local Government at Microsoft, said the company has a long-standing commitment to workforce development and e-learning. “Elevate America is the culmination of Microsoft’s digital inclusion and literacy efforts to address economic conditions,” she said. “The program also furthers the stated goals of the stimulus package, namely by increasing competition and building the economy through skills and educational development.”

First launched in February of 2009, Elevate America is designed to touch at least two million people over the next three years. The program seeks to develop technological skills in two ways: 1) a series of Online tutorials to help build digital literacy and basic computer skills, and 2) an e-learning and certification exam voucher to individuals seeking intermediate and advanced computer skills using Microsoft products.

Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, New York State Chief Information Officer and Director of the state Office for Technology, said, “In the current economic climate, initiatives which simultaneously increase citizens’ quality of life, boost our economy, create jobs, and educate our workforce are desperately needed. Many New Yorkers should take advantage of this innovative program, and this unique public/private partnership.”

To learn more about Elevate in America in New York, click here. For residents in Massachusetts, click here.

And for additional information on which states are offering the program, or on how to get your state involved, click here.

Washington’s Department of General Administration has a new director. Governor Chris Gregoire announced last Friday the appointment of Joyce Turner, the deputy chief of staff for Gov. Gregoire, as the new director, citing Ms. Turner’s experience and commitment to customer service.

The Department of General Administration (GA) oversees more than $400 million in goods and services contracts annually and manages over $500 million in “green” public design and construction projects. According to a report released February, GA has been focused on the state’s vehicle fleet and sustainability practices.

Under direction by Gov. Gregoire, GA is moving forward with a fleet consolidation plan and a lease management strategy that would reduce costs and increase shared use. Half of the state’s Motor Pool is made of hybrid vehicles, a distinction that ranks it first among all states in the number of hybrid-electric vehicles and third among all public-sector fleets.

Ms. Turner will be replacing Linda Bremer who worked as director of GA since 2005. Before joining the department, Ms. Bremer was Director of the Division of Information Technology Services at the Washington State Liquor Control Board, having also served in senior functions at the Department of Licensing and the Department of Personnel.

The Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) released a report earlier this month outlining the massive structural and organizational changes made of over the last six to eighteen months, as well as charting an ambitious course for projects in the near future. CivSource spoke with OIT Chief of Staff Dara Hessee and Chief Enterprise Architect Leah Lewis about OIT’s transformation and how the state is positioning itself to be a leader in IT practices nationwide.

In 2008, the Colorado General Assembly passed SB08-155, a bill to centralize IT management in OIT. SB08-155 laid the foundation for OIT’s transformation by authorizing a structural reorganization and consolidation effort over a four-year period. The legislation’s main thrust will be felt this July when Colorado’s 996 IT personnel, from fifteen executive agencies, begin receiving their paychecks from OIT. This relatively benign shift signifies one of the most complex consolidation and reorganization efforts being tackled in the public sector today.

The Colorado Consolidation Plan, dubbed C2P, is the state’s IT roadmap, and according to the Governor’s report: Transforming Colorado Government for Today and the Future, OIT has made “tremendous inroads in creating a consolidated enterprise that will enable the State to optimize spending for IT decisions, projects and technology, improve enterprise service delivery, and allow for the rapid deployment of innovative IT solutions.”

“The way we look at this effort, there are three components: People, Processes and Technology,” Leah Lewis, Chief Enterprise Architect, said in an interview.

As part of the people component, Lewis said OIT conducted a skills assessment of the nearly 1000 agency IT staff, spread across the state. “To look across [state] agencies and see where IT skills lie had never been done before. It allowed us to functionally align the staff,” added Dara Hessee, Chief of Staff for OIT.

OIT created this “functional structure” of employee organization in order to support agencies’ lines of business while ensuring the delivery of enterprise services, the report stated. Some of the functional bands include IT infrastructure, enterprise services and information security, to make sure no matter which department technology is being used, it is in lockstep with OIT’s broader framework.

Adding urgency to the realignment was the realization that nearly 40 percent of the state’s IT workforce will be eligible to retire soon. This created problems when projecting legacy application life cycles, according to Hessee. “There was a real need to leverage skills and fill gaps across the state.” And to make sure individual agency needs were not lost in the shuffle, Hessee said, “We put an emphasis on agency business needs to make sure the line-of-business applications are maintained properly.”

Thousands of hours and hundreds of meetings have been conducted over the last twenty months to realign the state’s IT workforce, but due to the nature of SB08-155 no new money has been appropriated for OIT to conduct their reorganization. “There has been no new money – we are doing this within existing resources,” Lewis said. “When this started, we had not hit the official recession. Net neutral was the goal and since then we have faced several budget reductions, so we’ve been doing this while cutting.”

To accomplish this reorganization, OIT worked closely with their finance director, Todd Olson, and other state and federal auditors to effect the necessary budget transfers and renegotiate contracts with vendors.

Agencies have different “colors of money,” including cash, federal grants, and general funds, Lewis said. So when OIT was transitioning all the staff, reams of audit rules and accounting procedures had to be obeyed. “Our billing model had to be very solid,” Lewis said.

Although the four-year consolidation plan is only half complete, both Lewis and Hessee know a major hurdle in the reorganization of OIT has been cleared.

Ms. Lewis underscored the importance of the workforce realignment to the broader C2P goals, saying, “This was something that needed to happen.”