Ministry of Education implements recommendations following Novopay review report

The Ministry of Education has implemented recommendations for its testing regime following the receipt of a Capgemini report on the Novopay Tax Patch Test Review.

Cathy Magiannis, deputy secretary, Education Payroll Services, commissioned the review to provide quality assurance about the level of testing for the August 2013 tax patch release.

“Because of the high-risk nature of the project, we wanted some independent assurance to support our project management and governance-level oversight,” says Lesley Hoskin, acting associate deputy secretary, Education Payroll Services.

“Due to the problems with Novopay’s introduction, the Ministry has greater accountability for processes and quality assurance than it would otherwise,” she says. “The review contributed to our management-level oversight without the ministry becoming directly involved in the project management per se.”

Capgemini recommended that the Ministry assign an independent test program manager; implement a comprehensive test acceptance phase; note that Assurity (which is contracted to do testing) has updated the tax patch test plan; and note that Talent2 has updated the project plan and the test register.

Hoskin says that once the initial draft report had been completed and considered by the Ministry, it implemented the recommendations and introduced measures to improve confidence in the testing regime.

“Following consideration of the draft report, the Ministry and Capgemini agreed that the essence of phase 2 had in fact been encompassed in the first phase. For this reason, we agreed that phase 2, as described in the report, was no longer necessary and is therefore not being undertaken,” she says.

Capgemini notes in the report the importance of the tax patch because it was the first time that Talent2’s core Alesco system would be upgraded. Alesco is an Oracle-based HRIS platform that Talent2 has been using for more than 15 years.

Capgemini says there was an immediate need to create a genuine sense of ownership and urgency within the test program and that it was essential that structured, rigorous and repeatable testing processes were implemented to provide early quality checkpoints for the project.