LAUSD RESPONDS TO THE RECENT GRAND JURY REPORT ON LAUSD PAYROLL SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

News Statement from the LAUSD Office of Communications & Media Relations 

July 1, 2010 - LOS ANGELES – Today, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) responded to a recently released Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury (CGJ) report on implementation of the District’s payroll system.

“We agree with the grand jury’s recommendations to look at lessons learned, clear oversight responsibilities, create an Information Technology Steering Committee, etc., and we are incorporating that into our Phase 3 implementation,” said Ron Chandler, LAUSD’s Chief Information Technology Officer.

“While there were obviously significant problems with the implementation of Phase 2 of the Business Tools for Schools (BTS) project, it is important to understand that the system is now stable. It is now functioning at a ‘best’ in class level, with an approximately one percent error rate in payroll.”

The grand jury’s own report indicated that a world class business or organization should expect a payroll error rate not to exceed more that .5 percent to one percent. Any further changes in the error rate at this point would be optimizations of the system, but District officials pointed out that there is no substantial risk of any future system problems associated with LAUSD’s payroll module.

It is important to note that Phase 2 of BTS contained the system implementation related to payroll. The District’s multiple release strategy was implemented and the phases were designed to not be interdependent. For that reason, implementation of Phase 3, and whatever risks are associated with it, would have little impact upon payroll.

Moving forward, funding for Phase 3 of BTS was approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education in April 2010. The implementation of Phase 3 will alleviate the risks identified due to maintenance of a legacy system. While the release is later than originally planned, District officials say it was prudent to wait until the issues with Phase 2 were resolved before rolling out Phase 3.

Currently, LAUSD is working on the planning and implementation of Phase 3, which is anticipated to be completed in July 2013.