March 19, 2013 1:09pm by David Farrar

Novopay assistance

Steven Joyce has announced assistance for schools:

The $6 million package will be allocated as a one-off payment across the sector, calculated on a formula of $105 per Full-time Teaching Equivalents (FTTEs) plus $500 per school. For example:

A small school of 5 FTTEs will receive $1,025
A medium school of 20 FTTEs will receive $2,600
A large school of 120 FTTEs will receive $13,100.

If there is eventually a court battle between the Government and Talent 2, then this will be added to the disputed bill!

Joyce also updated on the system:

“In the last three fortnightly pay periods, the percentage of complaints and notifications received dropped from 2.2 per cent to 1.9 per cent to 1 per cent while at the same time the total number of people being paid increased from 74,373 to 84,822.

“Following Pay Period 26 this week, the next big challenge will be Pay Period 1, in which significant changes occur for the start of the new financial year, including adjustments to KiwiSaver and student loan repayment rates. These changes may introduce new issues. The Ministry is working closely with Talent2 to minimise any increases in error rate.

So it has got better, but may get worse with the new financial year.

Out of interest does anyone know what the error rate with Datacom was?

“In regards to bug fixes, 87 defects have been resolved as part of the remediation plan to date, with 143 scheduled for resolution in a release on 23 March and a further 46 currently scheduled for 20 April. 228 defects are being managed through business as usual processes and we are looking at a fourth release to deal with remaining defects and usability issues.

The total number of current defects is 526. These include 49 Category Two defects (very serious), 320 Category Three defects (serious), 115 Category Four defects (moderate), and 42 Category Five defects (cosmetic). It is planned that the number of Category Two defects will be reduced to 12 on completion of the second release this coming weekend.

I guess a category one defect is the system is offline!