Graduate Aid Redesign Project
Payroll Meeting (04/24/2000)

DRAFT

Date: 4/24/00

Attendees:

Maria Fernandez - ODSUE IT, GARP Project Manager

Susan Guralnik - Course 6 AO

Fred Crowley - Payroll Office

Dan Fitzgerald - SAP HR/Payroll Project Manager

Robert Rippcondi - ODSUE IT

Purpose:

Revisit the goals of the Graduate Admissions Redesign Project to make sure that they are in alignment with the main issues as described/presented by the User.

Background:

This meeting was precipitated by a 1) a conversation in which John Curry and Professor Guttag (Course 6 Department Head) discussed the need for Graduate Aid problems to be addressed, and 2) a conversation between Bob Brown, Jim Morgan, Chuck Shaw and Fred Crowley about the Graduate Aid issues.

Minutes:

Maria walked the participants through the GARP goals. There was agreement that the goals as stated are accurate. They are:

1) Improve the end-user experience with the Student Information System.

The current MITSIS user interface is "too slow" and over complicated. A "better" interface, one that will accommodate point and click needs to be designed. An improved interface should accommodate a "fast entry" mode that would streamline the process by which awards are initially entered.

Note: The Grad Aid Redesign Project Team is currently working on the User Interface. The new process will allow graduate departments to establish custom packages. A package is defined as all the components included in the student's funding: tuition, stipend plus medical insurance. The idea of establishing packages is to allow Graduate Administrators to apply a package to a group of students. This will eliminate the need to individually retrieve a student in the screen and enter the same information over and over again.

The following three goals address the complicated reconciliation process:

2) Eliminate data differences between the Payroll system and MITSIS related to biographical data.

Even though Payroll has been entering Graduate Awards for awhile and the biographical data has gotten better, this is still a problem. John Smith in MITSIS may not be the same John Smith in Payroll. This may be particularly difficult with foreign names.

Progress has already been made with this task. There is a meeting already scheduled for 4/25 to discuss how to download MITSIS data to Payroll.

Other issues: Is it possible for multiple MIT IDs to exist for one student? How will MIT deal with duplicate ID's in general? These issues should be revisited in the context of Graduate Aid redesign implications.

Note: This issue was addressed on 4/25. Information Systems MIT ID database, when adopted by all Institute systems, will eliminate the potential for this problem. In this case, the HR system and MITSIS both need to be retrofitted to access the MIT ID Database when assigning ID's to employees and undergraduate/special students, respectively. This change to MITSIS is outside of GARP's scope. The change to the HR System will most likely not be made until SAP's HR system is implemented. In any event, the Graduate Aid interface to Payroll will not contain any students with multiple IDs.

3) Address the differences in how multiple appointments are handled in Payroll and MITSIS.

What MITSIS considers as two appointments may be viewed as one appointment in Payroll. For example, in MITSIS, two TA’s (for the same student) may be processed with the same accounts and level of support. This may be done in order to capture subject information. On the payroll side, however, this may be interpreted as an increase in the previous appointment. If MITSIS shows 2 appointments and Payroll shows only 1, it really makes the matching process between the 2 systems quite difficult.

Note that Fellowships and RA's are handled differently and we need to make sure that individual departments needs are addressed.

4) Improve the process by which SANDI adjustments are made.

Retroactive adjustments to account numbers are currently done via the SANDI. Even though this information is sent back to MITSIS, the original award record CAN NOT get updated because of (2) and (3) above. This is particularly hard to manage because more than one person is usually involved in this process: the Graduate Administrator that enters the data on MITSIS and the employee in charge of making SANDI adjustments. Unfortunately, when these changes are made on the SANDI, the Graduate Administrator may not be aware of the change. Besides reporting discrepancies, real problems occur when the user has to make a change to the appointment that has been "adjusted". What they call up on MITSIS and are making changes to is not an accurate reflection of the appointment because it does not contain the SANDI Adjustments. Thus they are making changes to and re-sending data to payroll and everyone else involved that is "obsolete."

The following "sub-issues" were also discussed. It was agreed that these should also be addressed by GARP.

Suspense Accounts problems

Susan presented a Suspense Account report. A report indicating Course 6 Suspense Account activity shows accounts that are not Course 6 and students that are not in Course 6. Note: the source of the report is not yet known. Susan will let the group know.

Tuition Not Part of Payroll

From Susan: Could tuition be taken out of the Payroll system? For Research Appointments the tuition and stipend component is processed by Payroll. This came as a result of the need to charge tuition on research grants monthly rather than on a per term basis. This requirement has not only complicated the business process but also made the reconciliation process difficult.

This is a policy issue that will be discussed at the next AAC meeting (5/18, 2:30-4:30). GARP project team members will be present to be a part of the discussion as well as provide AAC with a GARP project status.

System Performance

Systems need to be able to support peak load processing. We need to make sure that we are designing applications and acquiring hardware for proper performance during peak processing time (1st two weeks of September). Susan will provide the group with specific specs on her observations of systems performance. For example, she has observed a 45-second screen refresh (which is deemed as unacceptable).

"Lost" Appointments

Ronnie Dudley-Cowans, Bio-Engineering and Environmental Health (BEH) commented in the last AAC meeting that "appointments are being lost". In other words, the department thinks that they have done everything necessary to get a student paid. Their look at MITSIS indicates that the appointment has been entered yet the staff in the Bursar's office says that there is no award for that student.

Maria walked the group through the Disbursement process (a nightly MITSIS batch job). The goal of the Disbursement process is to post graduate award data into the student's account. In order for a transaction to disburse, one of the disbursement rules requires students to be registered. It was noted that during the nightly disbursement process no report is given to departments to let them know if there was a problem (i.e. students not being registered) during disbursement. This could set up a situation where MITSIS indicates to a department that an award has been processed but not disbursed and therefore not showing up in Bursar's MITSIS "screen". Note: There are no "disbursement rule" checks prior to award data being sent to Payroll. This will be addressed.

The suggestion has been made (by Jim Morgan) that a list of students who are going to be paid could be provided to administrators so that in advance of the students being paid, they could determine if someone was about to fall through the cracks.

Final Thoughts:

• There have been no commitments on any solutions (procedural or system). This will be determined by the GARP team.
• No expectations have been set as far as systems and interface changes. Payroll has made it clear that, unless a priority for change is made by senior management, there will be no "automated" interface between MITSIS and Payroll for Graduate Aid appointments.
• In addition to the GARP User Representative group, the AAC and Ike Colbert's Graduate Student Administrator groups should also be contacted for input and kept in the loop on project status.
• It is advantageous for the GARP team to focus on some quick wins to help gain community confidence in project progress.
• Part of this communication should include, in the short term, determining the relative priorities and timing for each of the issues identified above.

Date last modified: 04/24/2000 by the GARP Team