Automated Systems

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of the Treasury's efforts to develop payroll and personnel systems, focusing on: (1) past improvement efforts; (2) present system characteristics; and (3) factors important to current improvement efforts.

GAO found that: (1) Treasury made several attempts to improve and consolidate its payroll and personnel processing systems, but still operated the same payroll and personnel systems it had in 1974; (2) in 1988, Treasury determined that both payroll systems lacked operating functions, used obsolete hardware, and contained hard-to-maintain programming designs and language, while the personnel system was not user-friendly; (3) Treasury was working with the Department of Agriculture's National Finance Center (NFC) to convert its systems into a single, integrated system; (4) Treasury successfully converted 3 of 19 units and remained on schedule with the conversion plan; (5) although both Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) faced potential funding shortfalls in 1990, Treasury could reprogram funds to offset its deficit, while IRS expected its deficit to continue; (6) IRS also faced conversion understaffing problems and lacked a system for transmitting IRS time and attendance data to NFC; and (7) NFC was concerned about timely IRS conversion implementation, because it had scheduled other federal agencies for conversion, which restricted its ability to accommodate any schedule slippages.