I. Welcome (Cliff Lee) - Cliff covered the logistics for evacuation in the event of an emergency and relocation in the event of a "Shelter-in-Place" crisis.

Cliff welcomed our guests (from NFC South Randy Gonzales, Penny Forbes, Gary Gaspard and Donna Speed). Penny said hello and introduced the folks with her. Penny is now the Chief of the Operations and Customer Support Group. A re-organization is pending but the package is moving forward and hopefully will be in place by the beginning of the fiscal year. Penny indicated she was glad to be here then let the others introduce themselves. Hi, I'm Gary Gaspard, I've filled in behind Margaret Prell and I've been with NFC for many years, most recently with the TSP function (for the past 17 years) and now I'm happy to be back on the payroll side. It's a pleasure to be here and meet with the CAPPS reps. Hi, I'm Randy Gonzales, Associate Director of Development of GESD; previously with TSP side for 20+ years and was part of the system design for TSP. I've written some of the PINE programs that are still running today hence I have some payroll experience although it's been a while since I've been in the HR side of the house but glad to be here. Hi, I'm Donna Speed and I too came from the TSP Division where I oversaw the development side; I was previously in the administrative payments side of the house but not in HR. I now lead the Personnel Systems Branch, previously held by Glenda Dorsey. Glad to be here.

II. Participation in Disaster Recovery (DR) Drill (Lambert LeBleu) - As we did back in the March drill, we invite all customers to participate in the upcoming disaster recovery drill and usually do to ensure that clients have some connectivity once we're in a recovered state. We realize in a test it's more difficult to be able to connect and perform these functions from outside of an enclosed network. Info will be shared about how we will be able to conduct the tests...you can't have two entities on the internet with the same address; but if in a real disaster scenario, one entity would exist and we'd be back to business after recovery has occurred. The intent of this August drill is to test our systems; however, we won't simulate we've had a disaster. We'll go the DR site and cover all the databases, etc., ready to go and we'll pretend to be ready to start PP 15 payroll, and we'll ask for some T&A's to be transmitted and we'll capture some as side files and we'll try to transmit them thru...scaled down version of 100+ T&A's, we should be able to go thru a payroll process in the time allow....72 hour window would not work....we will also recover all the other applications and databases and you could sign on and do inquiries as in the past. If you have a dedicated link to us, e.g., VPN or a dedicated line and also want the same function to occur you will have no problems connecting but will need to do manual manipulation at your site. You're invited to go to Philadelphia or Atlanta and if you will be doing this, we need a list from you, photo ID, etc., for security into the building. The ACFO folks are only USDA and should not have any effect on you. Main thing this time around is payroll. If you are trying to access web-based applications you'll have to be in a closed network. Danger if coming from outside those connections and you click on a link, you will be re-routed out of Philly back to NOLA and this might make changes to production data - the REAL DANGER. As we move more to the web and IP oriented it gets much more difficult to test outside of a closed network. If you want to participate, let us know. Full function test would be to be in Philly or Atlanta. Dates of the testing are August 17-20, 2004 and will take 24+ hours. If you want to participate, you can start in the early evening of August 18th. We'll contact you to let you know exactly when you can start testing; if you are waiting on T&A's, then it requires waiting for the batch process to complete and we'll call you to let you know when they're ready for review.

III. Timeframes for Security (Jim Julian) - suffice it to say we're running a tad behind. I'm not trying to downplay this as we are very concerned and I'm not making excuses but we are encountering a lot of calls on a daily basis, over 400+ a week (and not just a request for a SSN for a certain amount of security but some are large #'s of SSN's attached to one request) like 75-100 per request. We're also finding that with the web applications it requires a longer time period to administer the security. The conversion from IDMS to DB2 has taken us into a new realm; what used to take 5-8 minutes now takes 30+ minutes and a lot of this is because of the complexity of the DB systems and access being administered over different platforms. Now, that's the bad news; the good news is we are definitely trying to work our way through this. One thing that has hit us hard is STAR, both STAR Web and 4.0. Lots of folks want to use it and that's great but we are getting inundated with security requests from both the testing and production sides of the house. We have a proposal to add additional folks to work on access administration and we're looking to automate some of the administration process versus using the manual process; we're hopeful that this will catch us up and allow us to move ahead. We want to be proactive and do some things that will benefit all of us. Any questions:

Q: Vickie - DHS: With regards to the Reporting Center (RC) and we've loaded our data out there, all user ID's that have been suspended must be reactivated by Security, not by the ASO. We know we have to request establishment of a User ID but why should we have to call you if they've been suspended? A: We need to check on this and whether or not we feel we can allow ASO's to unsuspend user ID's. FA: The RC application has built in security and doesn't use the CA-Top Secret security package. The application is programmed to have only two options, a) Administrator or b) User. To unsuspend or change a password for the RC requires the user to be an Administrator. Agency Security Officers would have GLOBAL access to other agency's users, which is unacceptable. FC: Others around the room are saying it's true. With the backlog of your security, why can't we reset these ourselves? Why can't we unsuspend these user ID's? FA: Jim indicated that they agree but there are security concerns and we can try to alleviate the problem by using the OCC and we'll take as an Action Item and get back to the community. See FA above. ADDITIONALLY, to unsuspend or change a password for the RC requires the user to be an Administrator. The OCC, being outside of ISPCS, only has Password reset and Unsuspend authority. However, in the RC application there is no breakdown of administrative functions. ISPCS can not allow GLOBAL Administrative authority to users outside of ISPCS.

Q: Cheryl - USDA: One concern in USDA we find with the RC is we can't get a report indicating who has access. A: It's on a different platform and we're working through things - we have a comfort zone with one platform. Again, the security is built into the application. This particular function was not programmed. ISPCS has no means of producing this other than to look at every user, very time consuming. FC: ASO's are supposed to be reviewing these reports: FA: We're working with GESD to get the access.

Q: Shavone - USPTO: User ID modifications - any chance of getting a taskforce to set up a modified ID vs a new ID? A: We are working on this and will route the simpler items to other folks to get this done quicker.

Q: Maria - GAO: We're doing a lot of testing because of legislation issues and one thing we're finding out is our requests down for access to the test database. We know there is a backlog, with regards to our programs scheduled for testing, are they being shared with the other agencies? We didn't get our security until one week before the testing? A: What system are you talking about? FA: Test database - EPIC. FC: Penny indicated that the Customer Reps (CR's) need to work with the agency to ensure testing and security is done as soon as possible via Jim's organization. Jim/Mike indicated they work with the CR's and assign a security contact with them to ensure the agency is able to test timely. Jim said one of the things they are looking at is rolling in of testing, we'll receive a flood of security requests (e.g., STAR) from agencies but then they won't test for 8 weeks. We need a 4-6 week window to get the security access approved.

Q: Peggy - BOP - concerns about web reporting and not having access to the list of users who have access and also on the STAR Web not having access to be able to unsuspend. FYI - we will be rolling out approx 1,000 timekeepers who will need to have an ID and many times they need to have it unsuspended. A: Penny indicated that is just for the RC. Jim indicated that once we get the OCC set up to unsuspend, we have no solution to unsuspend other than via OCC. As long as ASO can reset then that's a benefit. We're working towards a 24/7 operation with OCC to reset ID's. Until application security is rewritten, ONLY ISSO will be able to unsuspend users in Web Applications that do not use the Mainframe security software CA-Top Secret.

Q: Shavone - USPTO: what date are you working on for security? A: not sure as of right now but will have an answer when the CAPPS notes are issued or by the next meeting. Might have a different answer based on RC, Web, etc. I didn't realize this, but for outside we are working on early July. The backlog is determined by the total number of requests which doesn't take the date into consideration.

Q: Larry - DHS: I understand that security is a few weeks behind, can you give us a date when that timeframe will be a little better. A: we have a proposal that will be implemented as of today and hopefully it will be down within a month or so. We'll let you know. FC: without user access, we have employees who are not able to do their job. FA: We understand and are going to work hard to get it done. Mike will be monitoring it daily and our goal is to get this timeframe down as quick as possible.

IV. Voluntary Local Tax - 2 DOJ Requests (Brad Womack) - We discussed this last month; recapping, NFC currently withholds local tax for several tax entities and these tax entities (or locals) have agreement's with the Department of Treasury (TR) to withhold this tax. We have rec'd some requests recently for us to withhold taxes for small tax entities w/o a TR agreement. A TR agreement is between the tax entity and TR and one requirement is that they have 500 Federal employees within their boundaries, irregardless of whom their payroll office is. For <500 Federal employees, TR will not provide them a tax withholding agreement. For the last 30 years or so, in order to get around this TR requirement, we allow our employees to take out a discretionary allotment and send whatever funds necessary to the tax entity; this has worked very well over the past 30 years. We've maybe rec'd 15 requests in the past 10-15 years and we have directed them to the discretionary process. This year we've rec'd an addt'l 15 requests which is therefore bringing this topic up. DOJ, as an example, requested withholdings for a couple of counties in the State of Kentucky. In both of those areas they have employees in DOJ as well as other employees that NFC payrolls, e.g., USDA. A few questions jump up: e.g.., when an agency makes a request for a tax entity, who should pay for this? Should it be spread across all clients or should the agency requesting it pay for it? It could be any number of options. Speaking of costs, it costs quite a bit of money to implement these tax entities as well as money needed on an ongoing basis for reporting and reconciliation. If, on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most difficult to implement, we took a tax entity ranging at seven (7) it would cost approximately $24,000 to implement and an addt'l $13,000 in reconciliation costs annually, per tax entity. We were asked last month what other payroll offices do, how they handle this? We contacted both the Department of Interior (DOI) and the Department of Defense (DOD). DOI does withhold tax for small tax entities and treat it as a very low priority item; they do not charge the agency requesting the local tax and addt'l monies rather it's spread across all clients. DOI has 276 tax entities, we have 162. DOD has over 500 tax entities and they also do not charge on a case by case basis, they add the fees to the core costs and it's shared by all. They too treat it as a low priority. Both organizations dread dealing with the small tax entities. Sometimes there is only one (1) employee in that tax entity without clear boundaries; sometimes a city may be divided by a school district which is very expensive to determine. If we had to accommodate a school district, it would be a 15 on 1-10 scale, i.e., very difficult to mange. A "no file tax entity" means an employee doesn't have to file a tax return at the end of the year but the problem is there is no refund in case of an error, eg., mis-coded and withheld and no money back if error is determined. There are also some security issues, especially with our more sensitive clients. If we withhold then it'll be like any tax withholding we have now, i.e., if you reside in that tax location, we deduct the tax. If you have a small tax area, like DOJ requests but USDA isn't interested, oh well, USDA's employees are taxed, it's all or nothing. Some of our more sensitive agencies might not like this. We're increasing the audience size of people who can view SSN data, etc. Lo-tech folks and they require a manual request, they can't take magnetic media, requires paper reports, etc. which is more costly. Next step is a decision about this issue - we want to accommodate our clients but there is something coming down the pike that will affect us all, i.e., the e-GOV initiative and the Standardization Team. They are looking at this issue and we propose to present this issue to the team and start working on a resolution that we can all live with, therefore, that's our proposal at this time. Any questions:

Q: Doralee - TR: we don't know how the other organizations such as DFAS/DOI bill their clients, what if they do it for free or charge a lot of money. A: Yes they are. FC: But we don't know what their unit costs are and if we do then we need standard costing formulas. A: I agree and we'll send to e-GOv.

Q: Peggy - DOJ: Two of your requests are from my office. Back in '95-'96 we had an institution in KY who had a county tax for <500 people and somehow you entered them into TM008 and they don't have a TR agreement and it's my understanding that the employee comes in and completes the tax paperwork and an EPIC doc is processed and taxes are deducted. Is this correct? A: Brad - not correct; when we implemented the withholding process, it takes a lot more than an entry into TMGT. Our programs have to be directed to know what to withhold. Withholdings can be based on a percentage of state or city tax or other things. If we use "Alltax," we have to point it in a certain way to calculate the process and it requires a change to accept a hit from the Payroll Personnel System. There's a lot involved with implementing a tax. Another thing is our front-end would need to be changed. EPIC needs to edit the data you enter and would require programming to accept your entries and the variables the tax entity has. FC: do we have any that have a lower threshold? A: Brad - we grand-fathered in someone with this withholding so there might be one out there. FC: Would that rule you said hold true for our system? Or is any person in the locale is affected? FA: Yes. FC: those implemented in '96, TR turned down because they had <500 but DOJ worked w/NFC and tested and we entered tax documents on those employees and it has worked ever since. And when you look at TM008 it states "voluntary." FA: That term is misleading. The payroll office term of voluntary means to voluntarily withhold the tax, not voluntary on the employees part. DOD & DOI withhold for a lot more than we do and they are voluntarily withholding those taxes. FC: so you're telling me that if we have an employee transfer to this place they have the tax deducted? FA: Yes, it should. What county is it? FC: Clay County. FA: Brad indicated they have a TR agreement now and meet the threshold. FC: from Jody, should we go with the e-Gov route, what does CAPPS want? FA: CAPPS agrees to wait for the e-Gov standardization method. Our position is we have a system work-around, i.e., discretionary allotments. It works, it may not be perfect but it does work. One additional comment from Brad - one thing we'll do when we present this to e-Gov is to see if we can enforce our own type of tax entity...they have many ways of receiving the info (e.g., formats, how $$ sent to them, etc.) and what we'd like to do is standardize this like TR did with the large tax entities so we can get these small tax entities to take what we give them and the cost to operate this will go down. As things develop, we'll keep the CAPPS group updated.

V. Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIPs) - Project #40529 (Cliff Lee) - this is the issue that goes back to the DHS Act and the provision for VSIP's for all Executive Branch agencies and we asked who wanted to be excluded from the 15% agency contribution. Those listed below have been implemented on 7/1/04*. This is done via NOAC 825. This Act did not cover the legislative branch. GAO's new legislation provided them with a permanent VSIP authorization. Maria indicated she has a copy for Cliff and the file. *Programming changes to exclude the following agencies from the 15% Agency contribution to the retirement fund went to production on July 1, 2004: USDA, DOJ, DOC, Treasury, DHS, HUD, MSPB, FCC, FMC, SBA, OSHRC, NCPC, NEH, and OSC.

VI. Status of 2004 Retroactive Pay Adjustment Processing (Donna Speed) - the remaining suspense action figures on the retro are: CV 05 -24; CV 06 - 54; CV 07 - 04. We encourage you all to work on those cases. Cliff distributed those HCUP cases that are still outstanding. These are the ones for EPIC HCUP, not the old system. At least 33% of the remaining retro HCUP packages involve employees who retired after January 11th. These actions are generally in Suspense with the 478 error message; it is a simple error to fix and should be corrected ASAP. We sent out instructions on how to fix this error on several occasions. Until these errors are corrected, the RETM card is not corrected, OPM is not notified, the retiree's annuity is not recomputed, and the supplemental LSP payment is not made. Any questions:

Q: Tom - Smithsonian: I realize most are retirees and have separated after the 894 applied; does this also include other separations? A: Program picked up all separations.

Q: Doralee - TR: last year NFC was kind enough to provide a report of those not paying, can we get it again? A: Penny indicated they are working on it. FC: We would like to have both reports. FA: Ok.

Q: Sue - FMCS: Have the adjustments to lump-sum payments been done? A: Mose - all have been taken care of; if you have any outstanding, send to Mose. If the retro package hasn't applied, then lump-sum's have not been processed yet. Lump-sums' on separated employees are being worked on.

Q: Mike - TR: regarding dual rates, those separated before PP 01, those that are finished (dual rates) are done; if separated in PP 02 forward, the system paid their adjustment but their lump-sum's not yet done.

Q: Tom - Smithsonian: On the reports, it would be nice to have two reports, one listing employees not paid correctly and 2nd of employees who have not rec'd the retro payments. A: Cliff says the onus is on the agency to compare the salary....if not paid correctly, they should appear on a report where the employees have not rec'd the retro. FC: How would I be able to identify which ones aren't being paid correctly? A: Individuals whose actions have applied to database but retro portion not yet applied. Penny indicated Steve developed this last year and once he's back in the office, she'll get with him to have the reports modified. Randy will work with him on this. Hopefully we can get them to you electronically shortly.

VII. Benefits Updates (Jody Nyers) -

A. As we know by now, the FEGLI Open Season runs September 1 - 30, 2004 (with the first effective pay period PP18 being in September 2005). OPM issued BAL 04-205, http://www.opm.gov/asd/htm/2004/04-205.asp, which provides instructions for ordering the new form, FE-2004. From an NFC standpoint, we will be ready to accept these forms via EPIC and you can place them on an "I" status until such time as they become effective. At that time (next September), you'll need to take positive action to ensure the employee is in a pay and duty status before releasing the actions to apply. For our FESI users, since there is no mechanism to place the action on "I" status, you will need to hold your documents (in a safe place) until such time that they can be entered. EPP/ESS will be updated to allow employees to hyperlink to OPM's site to access the form, use their calculator, worksheet, etc. We cannot automatically process the personnel action via ESS; this must be done by the HR office; however, we do want to provide the employees with the link for the form. Any questions:

Q: Tom - Smithsonian: you mentioned if we enroll in September for 2005, you put in an "I" status. We (SM) are moving to FESI in October, what should we do? A: Wait until PP 18 (of 2005) to enter the documents.

Q: Mike - TR: what happens if we do a HCUP package, do we delete the document to process the HCUP package? A: YES, you'll need to do this.

Q: Cheryl - USDA: in AgPUG, we had a discussion about the "I" status and these documents don't stay out there very long. A: Normally, that's true; however, for these documents the system has been modified to allow them to remain in "I" status for one year.

Q: Debby - FCC: If we have a retro in 2005, should we delete and re-enter? Mike followed up and indicated if "I"status is not really a Future document then maybe it won't be part of a HCUP package. Good point, we need to verify and will provide the info to you next month.

C: Lucy - FDIC: we're a FESI user and we use "P" in our status line; for us the future is tomorrow, not like NFC. Whatever pay period we enter is the true pay period. We can put our actions into our FESI database until the date they go to NFC. For any FESI users, your front-end system may accommodate this requirement, or it may not. Depends on your system. No edit for the pay and duty status. Lucy also indicated they set up our FESI and enter a not ready status like a "I" status, all depends on how you set up your FESI.

B. TSP Open Season Dates - the latest information on this is that the Senate supports the elimination of the open seasons; now we must wait for the House's decision. The legislation does state that the waiting period for agency matching and the 1% will still be in effect; however, the Thrift Board has indicated they are encouraging the House to eliminate the open season completely (for employee's and employer). More to come.

C. TSP Bulletin 04-11 (handout in the back) - elimination of routine distribution of printed copies of TSP bulletins; effective September 30th TSP will stop the paper copy distribution. You can receive bulletins by sending an email to BULLETINS@tsp.gov.

D. Health Savings Accounts - I checked the website yesterday and so far we have no new information to pass along.

VIII. Employee Express Update (George Morris) - brief meeting, some presentations and TR updated their internal FESI. Testing for the Fall release is coming up. TR is going to Macon to test out and will test for NFC. The only issue that came up is that Macon came out with requirements for sanitized data and NFC has not yet implemented this yet, therefore, the data will not be sanitized and we have to take responsibility for security of this mainly if you're in a room where others can see what you're doing, ie., look over your shoulder. It's not data leakage or file transmits. EEX mentioned that DOJ is pulling out some groups, USDA is scheduled to pull out later this year and they may need to restructure their costing and interactive voice response (IVR) and its costs since the current software is not supportive at this point; they discussed the options, need another week to gather more data. TR uses IVR the most.

IX. Child Support Garnishments (George Morris) - George sent out an email from Steve Loeffelholz on the accounting and contact name listing of the State Disbursement Units (SDU's). This is being swept into the existing child support accountings in PP 14 and into an EFT to the SDU. There are four (4) states without finalized agreements (Calif, NY, MD, SC). These states have some discussions occurring but could be a while before this gets done, maybe 18 months from now. As any of these remaining states comes online, Steve will sweep the data to EFT. All new child support cases will automatically go to the EFT. Contact list of names for whom to call. If anyone needs a copy, we have a few here. Draft bulletin reviewed/discussed with Steve and will be updated and issued soon. Any questions:

Q: Doralee - remember when the HHS person was her and she discussed NFC not being in compliance w/multiple child support payments, what does that mean? A: It means proportional payments, which are very rare. It's the HR Office who has the responsibility for processing these payments.

Q: Vickie - the database sweep has been completed and there are no errors, right? A: As far as we know, we have no indication of any problems.

X. PAYE Accelerated for PP's 15, 18 for Treasury (Penny Forbes) - It's not an acceleration for PP15. NFC wants to let TR know that we rec'd the request to hold the first pass of PP 15 for only TR till Friday because of changes to their HR Connect system. This request has been approved. Based on an IRS request, NFC has been asked to expedite the processing of the last pass of PP 18 which will result in accounting files being forwarded to the agencies sooner. This would allow agencies to expedite the processing of their fiscal year ends closeouts routines. If approved by the community, all CVs last pass will be run on Friday night rather than Saturday afternoon. NFC CANNOT accommodate a different last pass schedule by CV. Please forward your response to NFC.GESDREQUEST@usda.gov. If we do not hear from you, our assumption will be that you have agreed to accelerate PP18's last pass. If you have concerns, please respond by August 20th. A bulletin board and email message will be forwarded.

XI. STAR Web (Penny Forbes) - NFC wants to let you know that the STAR 4.0 bulletin will be forwarded to the timekeepers. This has caused some concerns in the past because the HR office does not have control of information being forward to the timekeepers. Forwarding the hard copy bulletins to the HR Offices and expecting them to forward to the timekeepers creates a burden for the HR Offices and a delay in the information being received by the timekeepers. Any questions:

Q: Cheryl - USDA: will this go out electronically as well? A: Yes.

The STAR system is being delayed for 2 weeks - delayed to PP 17 - to allow more QA testing and validation of application issues that have been reported. It will be PP 15 for the pilot implementation and PP 17 for full implementation. Concerns from the community about problems still occurring. Per PSA, the application is not being corrected. Penny indicated they have had meetings 3 x a week to ensure that all problem issues have been fixed, re-tested, and documented on the QA plan as complete. DOJ indicated the biggest issue is testing of leave accounts, ie., wasn't calculating correctly. Many issues. Per PSA - the training Database will be available August 5th - when will we have a chance to train those in the pilot? Penny said the preview has been out on the NFC home page and agencies should have been using it for training purposes. We realize that the QA issues exist, but you can be ready from pilot to full production and use that time to train. PSA indicated they were told that you need to be part of the pilot if moving from 3.0 to 4.0; Penny wanted them to have a subset of your community so you could work thru any issues in training. We have to do that because when full production occurs, they have no 3.0 available and we'll have the pressure to train them. Can we get the training database available before August 5th ? No, because of our stipulations. You can use the demo off the NFC homepage for familiarity. Not a lot of change has occurred, per Penny. PSA says a lot has changed, including how confused the timekeepers are about it. The demo has not been updated in a while; I put out an email to my timekeepers and they said it's not easy to use.

XII. User & Work Group Updates

A. Awards - (Jody for Jo Bonner) There was no July meeting, the next meeting will be August 11th from 9:30-11:30

B. EPIC - (Mark Liegey) ERG met on July 13th and will meet again later this month. Decided that the monthly meeting will be held the Thursday after CAPPS at 10am and held in the Lincoln Room. Next meeting is July 22nd and it will be only the workgroup formed from the first meeting; we need your help but the discussion points will be 006 Update and "Grayed areas." We will do a triage approach, get the most bang for our buck and fix those that affect the most users and Mose's group. PPSPS has already looked into this and are leaning towards using a NOA 9xx code. Grayed areas are causing issues, do we open up fields or fix the system? We don't need to change the areas which might cause more problems. Access to the History LOAD, a function in EPIC, and moving that to the agencies so that PPO Box doesn't have to continue loading history data for you. Mark will send out the dial-in # for the meeting on July 22nd at 10:00am. DHS, DOJ, USDA and TR are participating in the pilot for HCUP.

C. FESI (Glenda Dorsey) - no report

D. ICAMS - (Glenda Dorsey) - no report

E. PINE Edit - (Cliff Lee) - PINE Work Group is on hold because of concerns of possible overlap with the EPIC Work Group. Cliff is currently working with the programmers to correct some of the systems problems identified in the 2004 retro process. We have found that in most cases the problems were not the PINE edits. For example, we found that history was storing "blanks" in a number of date fields rather than zeros. The date fields need to be populated with zeros both for the PINE edits and CPDF feeds. The programmers are currently working on this modification. Workload permitting, we may activate the PINE Edit Work Group at a later time.

F. PMSO - (George Morris) - George is out for the rest of July; email out to the group for an early meeting in August. Larry asked if he could send in some names? Yes.

G. T&A - (Jody for JO Bonner) Thanks to Grant (DOJ) for handling the July meeting for JO The next User Group meeting is August 5th from 9:30-11:30 in the Resource Room and the next Requirements meeting is August 5th from 1-3 in the Resource Room.

XIII. Fall Customer Service Briefing (Penny Forbes) - The Fall Briefing has been postponed due to the construction of the Jefferson Auditorium in the South Building. We attempted to locate other facilities in the DC area but due to security concerns we were unsuccessful in securing a site. We usually have the HR Briefing in the Spring in New Orleans and the Fall HR Briefing in DC; however, because of this change, we will have the Spring Conference in DC. We are looking at the following dates: during the week of May 17th or May 24th. We'll decide later whether we'll move the Fall Conference to New Orleans. Since we won't be holding a Fall 2004 Briefing, we're going to publish a brochure for you about upcoming changes, etc. We'll also post it on our website.

XIV. Potpourri

Doralee - when we enter 3rd party garnishments, we asked NFC for cost info? Steve has not given it to us and it was due on July 14th... Penny will discuss with Treasury folks on 7/22 at their meeting. We're going to get the # for all clients. Has anyone made the decision to do the commercial garnishments? USDA is waiting to get the costs and we'd rather let someone else do it, need to get into the budget.

Attendees on the phone: NFC Reps - Lambert LeBleu, Jim Julian, Brad Womack, Mose Lindsay, Mike Zeringue, Ron Andress. TREAS Rep: Mike Mire; Agencies represented: USDa, ARC, CCRA, CSOSA, DHS, DOC, DOJ, FCC, FDIC, FMCS, GAO, OSC, PSA, SBA, SMITHSONIAN, TREASURY