CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - West Virginia’s new $150 million supercomputer lacks the payroll functions of prior state computers and has caused the Division of Personnel to hire additional employees to process payroll transactions, an audit has concluded.
The legislative audit, released Sunday, says the division cites nine areas of lost functionality with the new wvOasis computer system, requiring the division to hire three employees who have a combined salary of nearly $100,000, The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported .
The cited issues include the fact that accompanying documents and attachments have been automatically deleted when the system rejects a transaction. Also, if an employee transfers from one state agency to another, the prior agency can no longer access that employee’s work history or enter any outstanding payroll transactions.
“I’m so sick and tired of hearing about this Oasis thing,” said Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson. “The point of technology is to reduce the number of employees needed and gain efficiencies.”
State Auditor J.B. McCuskey told the Legislative Post-Audits Committee that no one from the Division of Personnel has notified his office or the Enterprise Resource Planning Board about any inefficiencies in payroll. The Enterprise Resource Planning Board oversees implementation of the wvOasis system. McCuskey also blamed aversion to change and “general bureaucratic nonsense” for issues with consolidating 158 legacy payroll systems into the wvOasis system.
McCuskey said the wvOasis system was sold to the Legislature on the premise that it could produce enough cost savings to pay for itself. He believes it can still produce that savings, as long as state agencies work together to implement the transition.
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Information from: The Charleston Gazette-Mail, https://wvgazettemail.com.
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