The finance committee will sell their city council today is Wednesday, October 28th.
Now quickly please take roll.
May we miss Alice?
Present.
Councilmember Abigaille?
Present.
And Vice Mayor Bales Walton is not in attendance today.
Okay, so having a quorum, we will proceed with business.
Now quickly please make our announcement.
After each agenda item is presented, the mayor will ask for committee member comments and then take public comment.
You will have two minutes for your comment, and then countdown timer will appear for the
convenience of the speaker and attendees.
Okay, so we will begin our continuing meeting with item 2A, with project, element, and update.
We do have minutes for Dr. Coleman-Sawles here and Chief Agraw-Travster-Elisa and Martin
is to present the item.
Welcome.
Welcome, thank you.
Good afternoon, Mayor and others of the prior committee.
Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the finance committee this afternoon.
We have a presentation for you on Project Elevate, also known as Workday,
which was implemented in July of this year.
And so we're here to provide you with an update.
You will receive an update by myself, and I'll hold it as well.
Science director, Analicia Hernandez, Chief Technology Officer.
So we're very excited.
We launched Workday officially on July 1st.
We celebrated the act with a ribbon cutting ceremony here at City Hall in Central Alameda.
We also held listening tours throughout the city at a variety of different city locations
including the library, the corporation yard as well as the larger portion of this whole plant.
So the listening tours are really important.
We wanted to not only celebrate and launch Workday,
but we wanted to meet our staff where they are,
so meet them where they work.
So City Manager, General Cameron,
Assistant City Manager, Mike Ewen,
Finance Director, you know, Colton Bells, my filth,
went on the city light as water to address questions
and officially unveil the launch of Workday.
Again, this is really an opportunity for us to celebrate,
but also to listen to our staff
and to see how it worked
and was going to impact their everyday work.
And so it gives an opportunity for them to ask questions,
for them to share concerns,
and then have some immediate answers provided to them
during the listening course.
Again, it was really an opportunity for us
to kind of build that trust and confidence with our staff
as leaders, but also trust and confidence
in the new system of floods launched in July.
So, work done with a really large project.
It involved a number of staff members here in the city.
It was led as project sponsored by myQN.
We had tremendous work put in
from the information services team, finance team,
human resources team, and we had some special recognition
for a variety of different staff that were project support
and we recognize these individuals in these groups during that urban cutting ceremony. Again, it was attended by our city manager, our city manager, mayor, and city staff.
So just kind of wanting to talk a little bit about the roadmap. So we went live on July 1st, and when I said we went live, we went live with some of the core functional modules.
And that included HCM, which is human capital management, HR function, and then FAN, which
is a lot of financial components.
Then in September, we focused on implementing and launching open enrollment for our employees.
And that was quite a success.
Between when we went live on July 1st and the middle of September, we developed and
implemented and launched strategic sourcing module,
that's a centralized procurement site
that allows for the distribution of our fees, our cues,
also allows people to submit those responses online as well.
And then also in September, we went live on July 1st.
It was the time of the year in which Workday
launches a variety of different updates and releases.
So Workday releases two, typically in around
the first of the year, so January, February,
and then we have one, again, around September.
So those are reoccurring updates
that we're gonna see every year
to make sure that the system is current
and up to date with all of the changes
within the system itself.
And so we went right back into kind of testing
and making sure those updates were working appropriately.
And so where we are today is we have two additional functional areas that we are working to implement.
So starting in September, we began implementation of adaptive planning,
which is a budget development solution that integrates directly with Workday.
And so that project implementation is being led by finance, this is a care budget team.
And then we're looking to launch that as part of the biennial budget process in February.
Also under development implementation is ultra-culturing.
It is an HR function.
It does allow us to help manage certifications
and training requirements.
And so that's being led by our HR team.
As I said, we went live on July 1st,
on time and on budget.
So here is kind of a summary of the budgetary expenses
that we've incurred here today.
We do have a remaining available balance
of only about two million.
That is to allow us to complete the implementation of Adaptive, as well as learning and also
the continued support that we need to stabilize and optimize the Launchup Workday.
So to help really with the successful Launchup Workday, we really wanted to make sure staff
had the support that they needed to be able to function in this new environment.
So we focused early with early hands-on support.
The city developed an internal SharePoint site.
It became a centralized location for all materials,
all calendars and trainings.
And so we started with developing
on-demand training videos and job aids.
We had a scheduled online functional area training
that were held and attended.
We held approximately 15 different training sessions
to prepare for the launching workday.
And then once we went live, we recognized
there was a real importance to make sure
that our staff felt very supported
and had the resources that they needed
to really successfully begin working in a new environment.
And so we launched a customer service support group.
And we offered both online and in-person
customer service support.
and so we held those for the entire month of July.
So what have we been experiencing since we've gone live?
We knew back in May when we presented to this committee
that with any ERP system, there is a significant time
in which there is a transitional period
where there are challenges that are experienced
and expected, and so what does that experience look like
for us, it's kind of starting on the top left.
You know, there's early challenges.
Again, like I said, those are normal and expected
in the early stages when we transitioned to the ERP.
So those were the first few days,
couple weeks, we would go live.
We had early reporting issues,
so some of the early reporting issues
we experienced were data integration,
business process and security access,
reporting accessibility and payroll,
and we'll talk a little bit more
about those in the coming slides.
We had high user engagement, which is fantastic.
So we had high user engagement,
enabled us to identify some of the challenges
that staff was experiencing and rapidly identified
quick resolution by our implementation team
to address some of those early challenges
that we're experiencing.
The responsiveness through ongoing
customer service support, like I said,
we held those customer service support
through the month of July.
Many of those early issues were rapidly identified
and resolved by our finance team, HR, IT,
And also our consultants who work hard on equation teams.
You know, we still continue to experience some challenges.
So many of the early startup issues are as a result.
But as we continue to operate again in this new environment,
we continue to identify new challenges and issues
the more we're in the system,
the more we continue to use it in our daily operations.
Right now we're in the stabilization period
in which we emphasize on responding to current challenges.
identifying sound solutions, performing extensive testing,
but more moving to the live production environment.
So once we identify a solution, we make certain that
our testing needs a controlled test environment,
that we're really understanding potential impacts
that they have in other areas of within the working systems.
And so a lot of extensive testing goes into it
before we actually make it available live to our users.
So, like I said, some of the issues we did encounter by no means is a complete list of all of the challenges that we had experienced.
But they are some of the challenges that were more widely or broadly experienced by our users and not specific issues that were identified by individual users themselves.
So one of the first issues that we wanted to talk about a little bit with the employee,
the employee data, and so you'll see in the next two slides that people will show kind
of what the issue is, what happened, why it was an issue, and kind of where we're at with
that resolution.
So we got some mapping issues from our latency system resulting in data transmission errors
that were not identified during the validation process, why it was an issue, whether it was
reliable contact information, a potential inaccurate payroll deduction. This has
been resolved. It was a partnership with our employees, as well as reviewing
profiles with human resources and finance to make appropriate edits. Very
early on, also early revolution, was incomplete leave balances. We had a bridge
pay period which created leave balance reporting gaps. So we had a transitional
few days in which the balances of leave for employees were not accurate, so it was just
really a delay.
So it was a delay in accurately balances that were visible to employees in the new system,
so it did create some questions.
It has been resolved that HR are compiled, leave balance is needed, and updated all work
to all leave balances we worked at.
Another challenge has been in our mapping with chart accounts.
Some of the pre-go-lie mapping assumptions were identified to be incorrect using those go-lie validations.
And what I would say is that Workday has the ability for us to really have a much more modernized enhanced chart of accounts.
For example, in a new system we have the ability to create programs.
using recreation as a perfect example,
we have the ability now to track a specific program expense
in accordance with potential program revenue
to really understand the full cost
and cost recovery of that program.
So this is in progress, we continue to review a melody
to ensure accurate mapping throughout the fiscal year,
again based on this kind of robust,
enhanced account architecture.
Some post-vitalized issues experienced for business process
and security roles.
Inaccurate business process for invoice workflow.
There's a misconfiguration in our workflow
that's resulted in invoices being routed
to a broader review group than it was intended.
So invoices were being routed inaccurately
to broader groups, allowing invoices to be approved
by unauthorized approval.
This was a very immediate challenge that was identified,
I want to say that it kind of got on the date of UiLive,
and we're immediately able to resolve that
by adjusting the business process
to ensure that invoices were being routed
to the specific cost center manager.
In some ways, Ui
is like going to the actual program manager or a director.
Other issues were security.
the end-user single sign-on login error.
From a security standpoint, Workday requires
two applicating factors,
both an email and an employee, two.
Employee and employee ID.
So some Workday employee work email
and their employee ID number did not match
in the city's active directory,
and so it would not allow them to sign-on.
So it did create some delay.
It has been resolved, IT confirms all full-time
and part-time employees have appropriate sign-in,
appropriate sign-in credentials,
which include validating emails and employee ID.
And again, this is really a positive in a lot of ways,
because it really strengthens our security
security access to our financial system.
Some users were unable to access areas
required to do their jobs.
Again, when we launched Workday,
and users were initially applying
minimal security privileges to ensure their access
aligns appropriately with their functional areas.
So this is a work in progress.
Again, as our employees, as our users
continue to operate in Workday,
we are appropriately adjusting their securities
to match their roles and responsibilities
within the department.
Recording stabilization accessibility.
Initially there were insufficient recording accessibility.
We had prioritized critical goal life activities,
which caused recording configuration tasks
to be deferred into a later phase.
And so this is in progress.
Some critical reports have become available to users.
Staff continues working with the consultant
to activate more reports than identified needs
for customer reports, if necessary.
This also led to a lack of or no available training
on-demand resources for reporting management.
So reporting configuration tasks were deferred,
which did the right development of those training materials.
So again, we're in the habit of rolling out
more and more reports on a daily basis,
and we are planning to do end-user training,
develop jobbing and on-demand resources
as we continue to roll out those reports at the moment.
So the other areas, and to be expected, are in the funeral functional area.
So the first, which has been resolved, is the city holiday hours not appearing on our time sheets.
It was a misconfiguration of holiday.
Holiday hours were not appearing on the time sheet, which resulted in the display of 8 hours less on their time sheet.
This was resolved. Workday was reconfigured to account for 8 hours of holiday pay on all city paid holidays.
Another area of improvement is related to cost allocation.
So again, mapping issues from the latency system resulted in data transitionaries that
were not identified during the validation process.
You know, this is an issue because we want to make sure our financial records must be
accurate.
And so this is in progress, that was performing recommendations and comparing latency data
workday data and corrections are currently underway. Another area is the
inability or unable to split your comp time and overtime in the same day. So
again this is a misconfiguration and compensation for overtime hours worked.
So the configuration of allow employees currently to split overtime and
compensation time in the same day. So for example if they work two hours of
overtime in a particular day. The system only allows them to select one. They need to select either they're being paid
overtime or they're receiving two hours of compensation leave into their lead bank.
And so the system is currently being reconfigured to allow for that split.
But that is a configuration that we are currently working on.
And then two other areas within payroll that are creating some challenges are the new functionality called assigned work schedules.
So, current assigned work schedules are currently too restrictive.
Restrictively defined, rather, and don't support operational flexibility.
And what that means is, overtime is triggered whenever an employee works outside of their predefined regular assigned work schedules.
schedules instead of calculating on total hours worked in the week or the
pay period. And I'll give you an example, so the employees schedule says they work
Monday through Friday, the library will say and another librarian works Tuesday
to Saturday and they trade a day both of the days in which they trade because
outside of their predetermined work schedule it counted as eight hours of
overnight. So why is an issue? It's inaccurately calculating
overtime eligibility and resulting in incomplete overtime pay. And so it is an
issue. We are working directly with our implementers as well as with Workday to
simplify work schedules to allow more flexibility while ensuring that again
and we're still in compliance with all regulations,
including LSA.
Another area of configuration that has been a challenge
for us is those work schedules.
Changing work schedules in the middle of a pay period.
Current configuration of potential limitations
in the system does not support mid pay period
work schedule changes.
It doesn't recognize how to appropriately apply over time
It cannot appropriate a look at two different schedules at the same time. So this is a progress
We are reviewing
the system to see if it can be reconfigured to accommodate pay period changes
currently staff is referring from
Change in work schedules if you pay period
And one of the last areas that we've kind of been focusing on
When it comes to post go live experiences is organizational culture change
However you have a significant change in any organization, you kind of have something that looks like this, which is the adoption drain.
It's the spread of change management, so to speak.
Your initial part of your curve here, those innovators were very excited for this new technology, really embracing change, exploring ways for efficiency and effectiveness.
and what I do want to point out is that these percentages don't reflect the city of
Scannellander, but this is kind of just a model in which we see, with any kind of change
management organization.
Then you hire your early doctors for thinking influencers who champion the change and inspire
others.
Then you have kind of that larger group, which is the early majority people or thoughtful
individuals who adopt after seeing the benefits of what that system can bring, in this case,
workday. Then you have your late majority, those are still cautious, deliberate
individuals who adopt once the change is proven and expected, so that you're seeing
actual results. Then the last component is you have your black earth, which are
resistant to change and adopt only when the change is avoidable or fully required.
They're much more either passive resistant in some of the areas to move into this
change. I'm going to transition the presentation over to Alicia Hernandez who will talk a little
bit about Project Transition and Optimization. Good afternoon Mayor, Council Member Ibrightad,
and Public Manager Cameron, and community members listening to the online. Today we'll be talking
about workday transitions and optimization. We'll start first with the project transition
transition into the operational
Yeah
Okay, so
What are project transitions?
Transitions are like project changes either because we move into a new phase of work or because of people doing the work change
And why is this important? It's important because it is about city-wide not just by the project teams
But has a big impact
Today I will be addressing the transition phases and the transitions in people the human capital resources
so as you heard our finance director go through and talk about the
Stabilization period that we were going through we are also going to be transitioning into
operational mode
In July when she was mentioning we focused on media stabilization
so police could begin using work they do to do their work.
And part of what she also highlighted was this hyper-focus
with online customer service.
They could come in person or be online.
And imagine that's kind of like the training wheels
when the project first starts.
In August and September,
we continued that stabilization process,
but we removed the training wheels
and we introduced the help desk.
So now the team would be calling the help desk,
getting regular help desk support,
we introduced a new support team to assist staff
as they're working the new working system.
And then in October, we started transitioning
into the ongoing operational support,
shifting from those urgent fixes
into those long-term or strategic improvements
and standardizing how we handle these issues.
Next I'm gonna talk about the transition
in people and resources.
So we do expect in every project that new people
will be joining their team so new staff is expected.
However, in this project we experience
the unexpected departure of our key subject
matter of experts in all three areas.
in HR, in finance and in IT.
Our HR resource left us in the spring
and then almost immediately after a low life,
we had our finance and our IT resources
leave us to pursue opportunities with other cities.
So they were our subject matter experts.
We had invested a lot in their training.
They did a lot of work day training.
They held all of those key meetings
with our implementation team,
so we didn't just lose bodies,
we lost all that knowledge that they had gained.
So these departures have slowed our progress
on the list of reported items that you guys just saw,
and that left us with a challenge of,
okay, how do we provide coverage,
and what are we gonna do to make sure
that government will do the continuity
of this attempt keeps going forward?
So our internal teams are temporarily absorbing
the cross-functional responsibilities
to keep the essential city operations funding
and they are learning on the fly in some cases.
And to avoid the race on all of those in progress items,
we're gonna need professional services support
and I do wanna emphasize not just bodies,
we needed professional services
that are subject matter experts
in those areas that are still open,
that the team is still working on to resolve.
So they are highly specialized resources.
And this support would be temporary.
So just so we can maintain stability
and ensure we continue that momentum
in all of these core workday work screens
while we rebuild the internal capacity.
So the second part is optimization.
So what is optimization and why
are we doing it? So we are... optimization basically means to fine-tune the workday so
that it works smoothly, reliably, and it can support payroll, participating in ATAR, and
the city's financial operations. And why are we doing it now? Because the early
issues surface the areas where we need to refine the system and we are
addressing the math about we can prevent any long-term operational issues. This
This also led to the discovery of the reconfiguration efforts as you heard the finance director
mention that we did find that in some areas we didn't quite match how departments were
working, but we also have to adhere to best practices.
I do want to take a moment to talk about that to a time of matching how departments work
and best practices.
So when we were going through the issues,
we are finding that there is a nexus
to a lot of those payable related issues
through work schedules.
So with that situation, as you heard Nicole mention,
we are going back and we are reconfiguring the system.
Initially we thought, let's have all these work schedules,
we're gonna make everything so easy for everybody,
I gotta push a button and it'll populate your schedule,
make things faster for them.
What we didn't realize is that by creating all those schedules,
you were actually making the tools of a system very rigid.
So now as I pull this one, you would have to go back,
simplify it, reconfigure it so that it becomes more flexible.
The next example I want to share is about security access.
So in security access, our legacy system
didn't allow for a very granular fall level security
down to the data and with Workday we are able to get
down to that really granular security.
So we have situations where people are coming
to the project team saying, I used to be able to do
all these timesheets for all these other people
giving that access.
I used to be able to do this and that, I need that access.
But in that situation we are saying no.
Because we are giving to best practices
and we wanna make sure that we have
appropriate segregation of duties.
So it's very important that while we do try
to match our department's work,
that we also adhere to best practices.
So team all the best practices,
working is allowing us to strengthen our internal controls
to ensure that we have accuracy, compliance,
and re-riability.
So for the optimization, what's improving?
This is a summary of all the items
that our finance director reviewed.
We are focusing, for example,
our first priority is that payable process.
We are refining the rules for overtime, holiday pay,
and work schedules.
It is vital that we pay people correctly.
We need to make sure that we are compliant
with our regulatory policies and laws.
For our business processes,
We want to make sure that we make them efficient
so we are looking at the different paths
that the system is configured with
and we're taking a look at all the different steps
to make sure that we reduce the amount of steps
that people have to do so that they perform their tasks.
It's easier and more efficient.
And then the security rules,
or fine-tuning the security rules
based on the official rules and responsibilities,
not what people think they should have,
but what they actually are accountable
and responsible for at the city.
And you know, with an HR and a finance system,
there is a lot of sensitive information.
So we need to make sure that the access that we give
is appropriate, that the right people have the right access
at the right time to the right data.
With reporting, we did focus initially
on getting the critical reports out
And now there are several spreads on your way
to get the remaining reports out to the departments.
This way they can have the data they need
for their analysis, our recommendations,
and their decisions.
For the budget development, as Nicole was sharing,
the team is working on a really great project
for the Adaptive Module.
Adaptive is a solution that will integrate with Workday,
It's exciting because it's going to be more collaborative and more in a more
efficient process for developing the budget. I can tell you that me as an end user
I'm excited about that because it's a lot less Excel spreadsheets.
We are starting to see a positive change. The working controls are working.
We have an always on audit trail.
Every change is traceable. We can see who did what when across the entire system
And we can't turn it off. So as I thought it's called always on
And we also have accurate retro pay and
corrections
So now if there needs to be any kind of retro pay population the system can do it with full precision
So there's no more
manual
The role-based security also has holdability at any time, the system administrators can
run a report to see who has access to what.
Benefits and payroll now is one system of record, so with that, there is no data gap.
We can see right away what has been elected and what has been deducted.
really amazing thing is how engaged our employees are and they are reporting early. We are
hearing in some areas where stuff that used to take them four hours to do like for example
departments that have a lot of employees with a lot of time sheets would take about half
a day just going through all of that and now they're saying we can cut that down to about
one hour, so 75% improvement. And speaking of improvement we're also seeing
funeral performance improvements. We see that it is getting more predictable the way
that it handles the adjustments or the way that the system handles the adjustments and
complex observations. We're also seeing a smoother one-handed close emerging with
with federal workflows, cleaner data,
and real-time disability.
So to wrap up for next steps,
we will be coming to council-seeking contract authority
using already budgeted funds
to support the critical transition needs
following the loss of key staff in HR, finance, and IT.
And to recapitually, the first two are the modules
The finance director shared in the Orfeh roadmap.
So with the strategic sourcing module
going from the stock profile to the co-ed option,
the adaptive planning module,
which is a modernist nation of the budget
and a broadcast loop process.
We also have the reporting optimization
that she also mentioned about getting the people
that are rest of the reports that they need.
Our year end processing of fiscal year end at theory
to ensure the smooth close-up and the continued staff training.
We are really targeting the departments that had issues or areas or departments also experienced
transitions and we believe that our people are our most important asset.
So we continue with the hyper-focus on customer care.
We're going to continue engaging with the employees that we're listening to all of
feedback customer service is vital and we believe that all feedback is a gift. We
appreciate the honest and direct feedback that we're receiving from our
teams and with that I would like to thank you for the gift of your time and
we will open it up for questions. So thank you so much. Can we really pull a comment out of this item? We have not received any cards.
and so comes public comment and come back to Councilmember
that you're acting like this.
Thank you, Nicole, and we stand for the presentation.
At least it would be regards to work day
and some folks are allowed to work from home.
And some of those kind of work,
do we have, how do we allow access to folks who
Log in remotely who you are or say traveling Canada or Mexico or Europe
So so thank you. Thank you council member for the question. Yes. The work day system is cloud-based
So theoretically as long as you have access to the internet, you will be able to access work day
We do encourage anybody who is leaving and traveling abroad to please bring your devices into IT
so that we can check them and make sure that they are ready and hardened to different countries
for different risks. So we do want to check your systems and we also want to make sure that your VPN is working correctly.
So if you are remote, it's essential that your system is up-to-date and protected.
But the good thing about working in the cloud
is that a lot of that security risk
is put on working to ensure that there's
something safe in the cloud, regardless
of where the person is connecting from.
And we just want to make sure that you're
advised of and get compromised while you're traveling.
Right.
Thank you for answering that question.
You mentioned a lot of the folks who have the rollout.
Folks are now able to access the help desk.
Have you seen an influx and questions with regards to help desk and over the time as it has a decline with regards to questions of how do I do what on this.
Another excellent question. So, one of the, one of the things that we're looking at right now is the KPIs, and we did start when we were looking at a previous month so we did see a very sharp.
trend is going to down. So when the system first launched, we had a ton of questions coming in. So
in the beginning, people are reporting an issue, but sometimes it's just trained. Other times it's
a question. So we are going through and we are keeping track of the different metrics.
And we did see large influx of questions and issues and so forth, and on the help desk side, we are seeing a downward trend, even though it's still a high amount, it's still less than when we first opened.
Thank you, it seems like there are like running things with new technology and learning curves and a lot of folks are afraid of change but I'd like to see that it's actually working and a lot of folks are saving time.
I think my next question is with regards to, I guess this is for Nicole, reporting and mapping, I guess I'll kind of bifurcate those.
With regards to the reporting aspect, do we have a sense of what the reports we like to receive, and do we anticipate seeing different types of reports in the future that can easily be built or compiled together with the help of IT?
Yeah, so we, like when we went live, we did have some very standard reports that you call
it the Foxes, so they're very specific government to, you know, compile and develop reports.
However, we still had some very specific needs that we wanted, and so what we left for once,
we've been able to work with our consultant on that, and so those are available, but we
are looking for a more internal report that would be financing specifically for its reporting
for a capability that we're working with us to develop that.
One of the great features and functions of Workday
is that we do have the ability to learn how to
write our own reports and customize our own reports.
We have sent a couple of staff to train
to learn to do that with the idea that we will be able
to start building our own reports as well.
It is a very complex system, and like I said,
The chart of accounts is much more modernized and expansive
than we had in our agency system.
And so there's a little bit of a learning curve there as well.
But as we continue to operate in the system
and we learn in the system, the idea
that we will have the ability to work with IT.
And then finance staff also will have the ability
to create their own customer reports in the departments.
Gotcha.
Thank you for that.
And then mapping.
I know that we're constantly creating borders and what have you.
Do we anticipate any other hurdles with the mapping aspect or have we kind of laid
out the framework on that?
So I want to say with the mapping specifically related to the charter accounts,
unlike some traditional European systems, the city has the ability to really look
I think it had expanded it's chartered accounts so that we could more granularly track our
subsets and our revenues, and so it was not a simple lift our old chartered accounts and
shift it to the new system. And so some of the mapping challenges were, like I said,
we didn't have programs in our latency system. And so some of the assumptions we made in
mapping how it was in our latency system to the new system, the program, we need to validate
make sure that our mapping assumptions were accurate.
So we'll be very closely with the departments
as we review budget reports, budget to actual reports,
that the mapping of what they use in legacy system
is kind of adhering to where they would expect
to live now on work day.
Wonderful, thank you.
The last question is for Alicia.
With regards to work day,
and I know technology's always advancing,
Do they have an AI2 client?
Yes, they do.
Okay, thank you very much.
Those are our questions.
We've had a deployed VA. I come on and thought they had it.
Alright, thank you.
So thank you for coming to some of the topics I had.
So let's just go backwards.
Terminology, projects, and programs.
As talked about project cost reporting, is that same as program cost reporting?
So, how we use projects in Workday is that we're looking at a particular activity that
has a bit of a start and end date.
So, a capital project is a great example to use, right?
So, have a start date from which the project will begin and it will have an end date.
That includes the actual activity as well as the funding.
A program is something that we typically have the reoccurring activity.
activity and it could be a city program, so it could be like the
Aquatics program for example is a great one. It could be one that we receive funding for so like
Paratran it could be a program. So then it's something that happen to anyone. Thank you
And just to be clear we have both within workday. Correct. Thank you
Reports, so
Council member you are done here to look at the roadmap of reports
Do we have that roadmap that, let's say, six months from now we'd like to have this type of report?
Five months from now we'd like to have this type of report?
We do have a list of all the reports that we identified as needing for the own project
and really prioritized those reports.
We do have a roadmap of specific reports that we immediately brought on.
We have some that will continue to develop. What I will say again is we continue to operate, we're realizing we might need a different kind of report.
That we didn't know we needed to add back to our web maps again.
What are the benefits of picking an established ERP system that's cloud-based?
In theory, we have access to the library of knowledge of other cities that have used Lorte.
day, for instance, city Y or X has this great report that they run. Do we have
some kind of access to that knowledge base for working or are we just
creating, not just, are we creating reports from scratch? So we're working with a
consultant who had helped a number of savings and went at workday and so we're
really kind of providing them with information. This is what we need out of
system and I know that there are some of the implementers that we're working with have worked with other cities and they are consulting with
either other project managers in with this consulting firm to see if there is a report that was built
But there is a library of here is the city of XYZ and this is their report
So it's really relying on on their experience, at the reference.
It's consultants.
So we're thinking also, most user group meetings, so we will eventually plug into those and that's where we get to see what other cities are doing and share information and knowledge.
Especially if I'm thinking of the normal public and government.
I believe we're not competitors like businesses are, so really sharing information is highly, highly valuable.
The overtime, the change to schedule and the overtime and locations, that raised a red flag for me and so helped me understand.
I would think that overtime would be computed by some sort of very clear standard.
You work more than eight hours a day or you don't.
Or you work more than four hours a week or you don't.
And there's like this counter, this little clicker inside the software that's just monitoring
and saying okay, it's the end of the week, the following conditions have been mapped.
Pay overtime.
confused by the role that schedules play in that computation. So as Alicia mentioned, we
implemented work schedules. We did create very specified work schedules. And so to your point,
yes, the system should be able to be configured in a way that is looking at someone's time
And yes, you worked over 40 hours, or yes, you worked over 30 hours, so that is the configuration of what we're looking towards.
In some ways we have, I want to say bypassed, we've imposed additional control.
Yes, that is correct.
Thank you.
Page 12, I think that's page 12, we were talking about reconciliations, data reconciliation
on here someplace, new progress, the middle one.
Okay.
Help me understand some sort of timeline or construct because I've noticed it's a little
too big for me.
Oh, but it'll be complete?
Yeah.
It's currently underway right now.
We are looking at every employee and how they are charged in the system to make sure that the allocation is accurate.
This is an important function for us and so it is a priority that we're currently working on.
I would say it's going to be taking care of us both within the next couple of months.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor, um, for example, you may not be in the system for the next four
months, you may not know there's an issue with that person until they are, it's not
that anyone did anything wrong on this issue, it's simply the new robust system that maps
and sometimes it's not triggered until that thing happens.
So you're talking about the top one?
No. The cost obligation. The second one.
The second one. So that is...
So the second one is that each are issues?
I'd interpret it as a revenue or a cost
or some sort of splitting didn't come across correctly.
So the rule that we use for cost allocation for a given person or a given department,
given activity, given program, that cost allocation rules need to match what we want them to match.
And so then that could well take a full 12 months.
Correct, it could be for the most part the direction was also right, something like you were on three months.
But I just didn't want to be there because something doesn't get triggered in that time.
Because essentially now it's already correct.
So until it's triggered we may not know that it's incorrect.
And so then it's really focusing on, it wouldn't be that our financial statements, our financial statements could be, not the totals, the totals would be accurate, but let's say a department allocation or a subdivision on the financial statement might not be perfect.
So that's very useful, thank you.
Privileges, security privileges.
Who is determining security privileges in the department director?
It depends on what the exact security request that comes over.
So if the director is the outside of finance, let's say that this is for increased access
in the finance system on the finance side of the system, the finance owner is director
Rosales, so if anything comes in for like all I need is increased finance access, she would also have to approve.
She's involved in the approval of such a request, not just a director, but-
For the requester?
Yes.
It's actually who's, who- so you're, so pointing here visually for people that are not recording.
So Director Gonzales is responsible for security of financial data.
Yes, Andrew and Lee Hong is responsible for HR.
So if somebody says, I use the disability person's information,
we don't just allow, we make sure that the system owner approves it.
Correct.
IT, we're just custodians.
We're not the owners.
Perfect.
Thank you very much.
Never about removal of privileges.
Do we have quarterly review of security privileges?
Yes, that is one of the reports that we had
in the system additionally because we did
leverage Active Directory.
It was, Nicole mentioned it previously in her presentation.
Whenever somebody leaves,
as soon as that Active Directory account gets disabled,
it will remove their access and more things.
Okay, cool, that's awesome.
I'm also curious about people that change departments or change roles.
They can even be a promotion, but for reasons of segregation of duty, we wouldn't want them to maintain a certain access.
So that's why I'm like when there's employment change, what control do we have a place to list that?
So the WorkAid system also has automated reports that get sent to IT that lets us know those types of changes.
So then the control that we need to make sure with this kind of plan as the manager, the control would be that not only the reports generated but they were viewed and assessed whether upon promotion, upon job change, a certain person still needs the same type of access because especially when people become a senior, that's when the risk grows.
they keep their historical accesses and then you can have some chapters.
This is much comment, this question, but I just want to make sure that we're thinking,
you know, we have a plan for that and not just be talking to this chamber about it.
Yes, and you made a phenomenal point when you were talking about that review
because you're absolutely right. There's a person who reviews it,
there's the person who does it, and that's key for our IT general controls
that we have, okay, who will review it in terms of who should review it,
who should we can't move on to that it got done.
All right, thank you.
And so obviously we're not down at this level, we're not so much into the weeds,
but our job is just to keep asking those questions to make sure that it is happening
because that's that kind of control weakness that eventually can cause problems for normalization.
As about reporting or working remotely, why should I have tax compliance, so tax as an
income tax, state income tax and the like.
Do we on timesheet report when someone is in Hawaii, Texas, Vermont, where do they happen
to be?
Do they report on their timesheet, their geographical location?
So something that we may want to think about is how, in this world of distributed work,
how we ensure that we don't inadvertently cause a tax compliance issue.
And there's all sorts of rules, and I don't know the rules, but if you work more than
a certain amount of time, a certain location versus temporarily, then we can just please
make sure that we address that risk.
I don't know that we have many people working remotely, but to the extent that we do.
Another one of us is a number of cities have started implementing local taxes.
So for example, if you work in the city of San Francisco geographically, you're sitting at your destination.
You may be a city senator or employee, but you're physically in San Francisco doing it for more than a thousand hours.
Whatever the magic number is, it's just something that I want to make sure we think about.
think about. And that we are, we're mindful of, because that could go to a policy. You can work remotely, but not one in X.
Or you must report this in certain ways. I don't know what all those rules are, but I just want to be mindful.
Have we done any sort of surveys?
Is it too early to say?
Hey, are you glad that we did a mens transition?
But there comes a time where people are not so mute to it that there is strong language change.
But they go like, oh my gosh, as I look back I can't believe that now I get to do this.
I know that the HR faculty will use their funds to change their information.
It's actually a win. I've heard that with my own ears.
but just trying to understand, you know, like where did you enter an option curve there?
If you look towards that, a falling curve is in the bell shape.
The idea is correct that some people will take time, but at some point,
you hope that 70%, 80% of the folks see the positives outweigh the pain that they went through.
There's a way to capture that in a pulse of the workforce.
Whatever it is that we do all ready to check in on people, I think that would be nice.
The recorded trains, if you're notified, those are all just available on the site item.
I can go get work trained, if I work day trained, if I want to.
They're on an internal, but yeah.
Perfect.
Because that's on...
And you know, I'll say it publicly, I'm very grateful to all the people that work so hard to make this happen.
and there's some of them really really beautiful who work very long hours.
I was here on weekends when people were here at 8 o'clock and that one people were here working
and I just don't want to make sure especially though some of the people that left were among those.
The people worked really hard not to make this happen and very very grateful about that.
So obviously critical reporting is critical so I'm excited that there's a roadmap and that you're
planning towards that, you did say one thing on the PACE, it was MHR, a question maybe
to answer it. No manual retro pay. I didn't understand that much.
Sure, so in the related system, all retroactive pay was calculated manual.
Like a spreadsheet.
Like a spreadsheet.
Someone must know about that.
especially and now with work day it allowed us to
Calculate it based on the rules and that are established in work day
There's more accurately and confidently cap rates of those actual fees are
Less time consuming they're more efficient
There are a lot of positives to us having the ability to do right back to the calculations within the system
And it it has the audit law for that correct
And does that necessarily involve changing a rule in the system, or could we get waivers even manually override for an oddity as a reason that needs to be adjusted?
So I'm going to do an auditing.
Well, here's a question check.
I would think that the reason that the mistake happens, so it's not paid properly or we need to make an adjustment is typically going to be in the early stages.
because a rule is not quite right.
It's like a Greek rule.
We're going to do a monologue with Greek rule.
And in theory, that will fix everybody's pay
that's subject to that rule.
Or of course, magic button is fixed.
But there are other times, I would think,
that something very unusual happened.
It's just a one-off.
And we're not going to change the rules of our system,
but we are going to make an adjustment.
We have the capability to do that.
correct we do have an ability and there's also an ability to in a requirement like staff to put notes on if and why there is an annual estimate and there is a clear audit trail to match that as well.
Thank you. What I would say is that normally, when you have to do research as a human error,
for example, I am an hourly employee. I didn't put in four hours of work that we've been out of my check for four hours.
But I did not put in. And so it's not a rule. It's now you know versus someone calculating.
And so they typed four and they typed in eight and now it's going to be eight hours depending on what you're looking for.
Then my last question, a comment, or sort of work, Page 21.
We identified that in the old days, it appears that there were two different systems for benefits and paywall.
So I'm going to get the better forward bullet.
And it's not that everything was in one system at HR, the system of record piece.
Yes, so that's the continuation of having one system of, one system of record.
So if the border goes one system of record, is that what anybody knows?
On the, I'm not 100% familiar but I'll get back to you about Eden history.
Yeah, I was just saying, it was like a call out. I was like, whoa, did we have two different systems or one for benefits, one for available?
I know it was one system, all benefits and payroll was in that system.
So that part is not a transition, but it is working, but it wasn't a change.
Yes, it's not a change.
It's definitely empathetic that we continue to be one system of record where some agencies when they upgrade, they split up, for example, at the biggest agency where I was at,
You have that one part of the ERP is people talk and the part will be telling you this.
So Peter, I will fully explain that to you. We have one.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
The last question has to do with child requirements.
So now we're moving to a workplace shop.
So is that, are we updating our work requirements to say we don't have people that are work day knowledgeable?
What do we need to do in order to do that, or is there a problem with doing it?
We don't want to answer that here, we want to talk about it, that's fine too, but just this concept.
I'll make a comment on that question, how that?
It strikes me that it's really important that we be thinking about these wonderful new tools,
and to optimize their use of these old kind of people that experience using the tools.
That's a long advantage.
So thank you very much for the presentation, and we will go to our next item, 2B.
With the public, can you tell us what the B is?
2B is the pension trust investment report, and we'll hear about it in a minute.
Oh, sorry. You were asking for the clicker. My apologies.
Good evening. I am an open-level finance director.
I'm sorry. Go ahead.
The presentation that I have for you this evening is the OPA pension trust investment
report for calendar year 2026, quarter three, which is ending September 30th, 2026.
So this is a brief presentation, we come to you on a quarterly basis to provide an
update on the investment of both the OPA trust as well as the pension trust.
This quarter, we did see a decline under performance in both the OPEB and pension trust.
You'll see in OPEB Trust, the valuation decreased from $25.6 to $25 million.
However, one-year returns are at 3.45% and in census and deception in 2015, the average
return is 9.2, or 0.92%.
Pension trust also declined in value from 39.7 to 39.1 million.
Again, positive returns for the one year of review at 6.72%.
Pension trust was established in 2021.
and that was in inception the state returned 4.89 percent.
We did see again this underperformance, a lot of the market was impacted by
and of course being in the global economy, being accomplished around the world.
We also experienced a federal hike in rates recently.
I was making the market participants a little hesitant and so the market did slow.
It's anticipated that there won't be any change in the federal rate in November.
However, it is anticipated that there could be a potential increase in December.
And so all of that really does impact how the market performs.
And do you want to point out, like I said, we did have positive returns on investment
from the pension and you don't have trust when you look at from a general perspective.
So a year over year there's positive investment returns about 1.8 million in the pension fund
and about 500 out of the additional veterans.
That's my last slide.
I don't have any questions and suggestions.
Very quickly, will you pull a comment and then pull a comment?
We never seem to be first.
So we are closing public comment and getting to council member.
Thank you.
Thank you to go for the presentation.
You actually make a question that I already know
in regards to why the dip makes sense
with the economy and current errors of what's happening.
But that's just my comment. Thank you for the information.
A very similar reaction, but I think a real driver
is that we have a mix of models and stocks.
So the stock returns are probably positive because we'll invest in the S&P 500.
It's the bond market that's going to take on a hand-pins interest rate price.
So, somebody I keep thinking about because we'll talk about later.
So with that we're done with this item, so I don't seek to see.
So item C is a review of the proposed 2027 by the committee calendar.
are coming to you a little early in October, but we did want to elevate this
to this committee. It is regular scheduled for Wednesday of every month,
with the exception of November and December to accommodate holiday and
weeks in both November and summer. We are proposing to move the Finance Committee
meeting in November to the 17th and then in December to the 15th. So just kind of
looking for consensus and approval from this committee on the proposed schedule for the committee meetings for 25.10.
So do we have any public comment on this item?
We do.
So if there's any public comment, that's a little bit of work.
Thank you very much.
Nicole, thank you for this. I will not be here next year but I will be retiring.
So just a couple of considerations.
I know there are National League of Cities
and California League of Cities events
that kind of coincide with our meeting dates.
Like, I will not be here in November
because I will be at a National League of Cities conference
in Nashville and of course we'll be missing
the finance committee meeting.
And I think this is my last finance committee meeting
because we just canceled December, I think.
Yeah, what's that?
Not for finance committee.
Not for finance?
Finance is not canceled.
For this year?
Of course.
OK.
It's still here.
I'm correcting that.
I got a notification to those council.
Anyways, we should take that into consideration.
So we just want to make sure we have quorum in order
to keep temperature checks to make sure that folks will
be present for these meetings.
But other than that, I agree with this.
I don't know if that's what I'm on.
I don't know if that's what I'm taking.
inspiration that because you do tend to have a lot of participation in those events, if someone can compare this back calendar with the calendar, we can make adjustments on the real time side of what we say here today.
But I can tell you for sure that I will be the chair of AO Community Energy this coming year.
And so that November date, so we meet on the third Wednesdays.
And so I will not be here on the 17th to the 15th because I'll be sharing.
I don't know when the U.S. Bears Conference and Winter meetings on it.
I need to go and find that out.
It will either be around the 20th or around the 27th.
It's always a good time range, just need to figure that part out.
Other than that, I think that's the commentary that I've got on the calendar, but essentially
it's the same idea.
Please come check to see how these dates align to these national and state navigators.
So that bill goes out with this item so you've got, we don't need to take this as city council
Okay, so it's just you walked in that they managed to give us alignment to those national
calendars and specifically how we find them when I work in the San Brooks.
How we're sharing your community, likely.
Um, okay, so this opportunity to call out items that are not on our agenda.
Do we have any other comment for items that are not on our agenda?
We didn't.
Okay, so we'll close that.
I'll offer one comment.
There was a discussion, I think, on one of our community members around finance goals
and one in particular that got called out was bankrupt installations.
And so I just want to lift that up and say that needs to be a really high priority.
just, you know, there was a control weakness like three years ago, I think it was,
we just need to, need to, need to, need to.
And because it's common, I'm not going to ask you the moral question, but I would,
you know, like to hear back what the plan is and how we're going to get to
basically doing a bank record resolutions in a month, right?
So we have to say, I'm going to start this off and I'm hoping that we're
pay is going to enable us to do that much more captively and more clear ease.
With that being said, we are done with the business and business committee and we are
adjourned at 5.13.