I.  Welcome/Opening Remarks  

·        Dora Lee Rosendorf, Chairperson called the T&A User Group Meeting to order 1:45 PM EST.  

II.  Issue Updates:  (None) Compensatory Time for Travel – No issue updates so we discussed Comp Time changes.  

·        Dora Lee discussed the NFC Bulletin and the changes to NFC payroll/personnel system for the processing of Compensatory Time effective pay period 01.  These PPS changes implement the OPM enacted regulations, which became effective on May 14, 2007, to establish standard government wide, time limits for using compensatory time earned by employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) under Title 5 and employees not covered by FLSA.

• NFC Bulletin, NFC National Finance Center Bulletin Title I, Payroll/Personnel Manual, 08-3, Compensatory Time Changes Effective In Pay Period 1, Date: January 17, 2008.  http://nfc.usda.gov/Publications/Bulletins.  (Search by all Title I).
• Cindy (APHIS)- Wanted to know if the NFC system knows to take the comp time hours from the most current comp time earned.  Jo explained that the intent was to program the system to use whatever comp time expires first.  Terrine (NCPC) verified that the NFC Bulletin did state the system would use whatever comp time expired first.
• There was another question in regards to finding this information in TINQ.

Action Item:  Where is Compensatory Time expiration date located in TINQ?

·        Shavon (PSA) raised the issue of comp time issues in PP-02.  She had several individuals that showed up on her leave error report with erroneous comp time balances and when she tried to adjust them in TINQ she ended up with negative values.  TR-BPD and DOJ indicated that they also had these errors. 

• Jo indicated that she was aware of the TINQ issue and it resulted from the fact that programming changes for TINQ were applied after programming change for TIME.  TIME was considered the more critical application and was updated first.  The TINQ changes for CT were not moved over until February 13.  Jo did not realize that the changes being done were for system generated balance errors.  NFC’s CMB is going to research this further to determine the cause of the system generated errors

Action Item:  Shavon will check TINQ and collect feed back from other agencies still experiencing this issue and submit it to Diane (NFC).

III.    OPM Memorandum, Subject: Recent Pay and Leave Legislative Change (This was actually later on the agenda, but the conversation drifted here by the nature of the topic.)           

· Info added to Dora Lee’s coverage of the Compensatory Time for Travel for FWS Employees.  OPM CPM (Compensation Policy Memorandum)  

• If you have non-Title 5 FWS employees, you must notify Jo Bonner of your intent to follow/ not follow the Title 5 methodology.  A notice to this affect was posted on February 22, 2008, with a due date of March 7, 2008.  The agency’s CAPPS reps should be submitting the agency’s answers.  The law must be implemented no later than 90 days after the law was signed – it was signed on January 28 – or whenever OPM publishes guidance.  OPM is not sure if it will be able to publish a Federal Register document prior to the due date specified in the law.  

IV.  Web TA

·        Susan Porte (NFC) explained NFC meet with USDA last week and was notified that Web TA should be implemented for all USDA agencies by December of 2008. 

·        Question 1) Will NFC provide a blanket contract for Web TA so that any of NFC's clients can consider this system and any information about the cost?

• Susan stated NFC is currently gathering requirements and putting together a Statement of Work.  

·        Question 2) Any estimate about when Web TA may be available?

• Currently, there is no schedule on implementing the USDA agencies.  

·        Question 3) There are many versions of Web TA, some are customized, will Kronos allow those clients with customized Web TA systems to sign onto the contract sponsored by NFC; these clients would have to pay for their own unique maintenance.

• Susan advised that this is a Kronos question.  She suggests that agencies do not cancel their current Web TA contracts, but they can submit a request to NFC in regards to NFC hosting Web TA for their agency.
• Dora Lee asked if Star Web would go away.  Susan advised that currently there are no plans to sunset Star Web.
• Dora Lee wanted to know if other agencies could be included in this contract with NFC.  Susan explained the contract is with USDA and Kronos.  NFC only has a contract for the maintenance part.  Currently there are no plans for NFC to implement other agencies.  Susan stated that someone would provide periodic updates at the CAPPS Meetings.  

·        Cheryl (DHS) provided information on DHS’s plans to establish all bureaus with the same version of Web TA.  Susan advised that NFC is working on this same issue; establish one line of code but have the customization on the back end.   

·        Dora Lee was concerned because one of her bureaus contracts a USDA agency to process their T&As through Star Web.  She is concerned that the implementation of Web TA will cause this USDA agency to cancel the contract; since they will be using Web TA, why continue to have access to Star Web.

(Side bar- Dora Lee will provide the name of the Treasury bureau and the USDA agency to Diane.  Susan will check to see what plans the agency has for Star Web.)  

V.     National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 

·      Recent Pay and Leave Changes:  The following information can be found on OPM’s website under CPM-2008-04 by going to OPM’s website, selecting Pay Administration and selecting the Compensation Policy Memoranda (CPM) on the left hand side of the screen.  Jo encouraged attendees to check here regularly for updates regarding pay and leave issues.  Many of these document are originally issued as a memo to the Chief, Human Capitol Officers (CHICO’s) and are subsequently posted here as CPM’s for the rest of the community.  While the focus for this portion of OPM’s website is pay, the line between pay and leave is often very fine.  

·        Today’s coverage was not intended to be comprehensive, but to provide a brief summary of the highlights for these changes.  Specific topics were:

o   FMLA has been expanded to 26 weeks to care for a family member recovering from an injury received while incurred on active duty with the military.  This portion of FMLA will be referred to as “Military Family Leave” (MFL).  If an employee has already used 12 weeks of regular FMLA s/he is only entitled to an additional 14 weeks under the MFL portion.  OPM is expected to issue additional guidance in this area.

o   Salary offset for Non-Appropriated Fund Instrumentalities (NAFI) this does not apply to any of our clients.

o   Waiver of premium pay cap for certain overseas employees.  This will be applicable to many of you either on the bi-weekly T&A and/or the processing of various pay documents.  Please read through it in detail.

o   Compensatory Time for Travel for FWS employees was covered under Dora Lee’s area above and I added my comments on this during that discussion, so I won’t repeat them here.

o   90 Day AL ceiling for SL/ST positions. Some of you may have already gone to OPM for exceptions in this area.  If you have non-Title 5 SL/ST equivalent employees, please be prepared to respond to a programming inquiry on this.  I’m waiting on a little more information from OPM, but you can expect a data call on it.

o   Pay setting for NAFI employees.  If you are in the pay setting area of your organization, please take note of this change.  We don’t have many former NAFI employees on our roles (they’re former DOD employees in certain DOD positions), but those individuals doing staffing/pay setting for your hires need to be aware of this change.

o   The Voluntary Leave Transfer Program has been modified to allow participants who are wounded veterans expanded benefits.  While the Leave Share programs are not automated in NFC, we plan to expand the transaction descriptor codes to accommodate VLTP usage for this reason.  Again we are waiting from additional information from OPM before assigning these, but plan to provide as much information as possible as soon as possible.  

VI.    OPM Memorandum, Subject:  Recent Pay and Leave Legislative Changes

          (Discussed earlier)  

VII.  Comp time Reports in the NFC FYI Library  

·        There are three comp time reports developed by Linda Reter (DOJ).

o   COMPMNTD and COMPREGX- provides current compensatory balance data for regular comp time as reflected on IRIS 139 from PAYPERS.

o   COMPTRVX- provides current comp time travel balance data as reflected on IRIS 139 from PAYPERS.  

VIII. Discuss Meeting Cancellations- Agenda  

·        Diane (NFC) discussed the issues with sending the agenda out on time.  She proposed that the Chairperson provide her with agenda topics by close of business the Wednesday before the scheduled meeting.  Dora Lee agreed and requested a reminder the Friday before the due date.

·        A discussion to move the TAUG meeting to Wednesdays ended with the request to include this as an agenda item for the next meeting.  Currently, the group meets on a Tuesday every six weeks.  

IX.    New Issues  

·     Customer Notifications- it was asked why a notification did not go out for the TINQ or pay period 01 leave issues.  Diane advised that we send out notifications for global issues or issues affecting many agencies on one CV.  Also, if we are not notified of a system issue, we are unaware that a notification needs to be sent out.

o       Once Shavon provides more information and feed back from other agencies on the TINQ issue, if needed, we can send out a notification.

o       Grant (DOJ) inquired if it would be easier for NFC to locate the system or problem code, software etc. if the agency identified the issue and provided ssns and other documentation.  Jo explained that would help but sometimes there are outside factors that inhibit the programmers from finding the source of the issue.  

X.   Adjournment  

·        Facilitator adjourns the meeting.  The meeting ended 3:00PM EST.  

Next Meeting Date:  Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 1:30 PM EDT.  Check the agenda for the room location.