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Authorizing City Council’s Fiscal Stability and Intergovernmental Cooperation Committee to hold hearings investigating and seeking solutions for problems with the OnePhilly system in light of ongoing issues and inefficiencies which are compromising the City’s basic functions and public trust.
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WHEREAS, OnePhilly is the City’s new payroll and human resources system which has encountered serious errors since its implementation and raised questions about the City’s ability to administer important functions for its more than 25,000 employees; and
WHEREAS, On October 12, 2019, the Inquirer reported that potentially thousands of employees had been overpaid by the OnePhilly system, and the City remains unaware of how much money has been lost; and
WHEREAS, The overpayment errors are in addition to the underpayment of thousands of employees by OnePhilly since its payroll system rollout in March of 2019. These underpayment errors have resulted in numerous claims against the City by unions and individual employees; and
WHEREAS, Since 2015, the following issues with OnePhilly have surfaced: significant delays in launching the system which was scheduled, under contract, to be completed by December 2015, payroll errors resulting in litigation from City employee unions, increases in overtime costs due to miscalculations for thousands of employees who earn time-and-a-half pay, inaccurate sick time and vacation accruals, and situations in which employees have reportedly been tasked with tracking their own time; and
WHEREAS, In June of 2020, the City Controller released an audit of the OnePhilly system. The report found implementation of OnePhilly has failed to reduce certain inefficiencies and redundancies related to time entry and payroll processing, and in some instances resulted in increased workloads and increased risk associated with erroneous time entry and payroll. For example, the Department of Prisons stated it takes three times longer to process payroll under OnePhilly; and
WHEREAS, The City has paid over $50 million thus far for the OnePhilly system, and it continues to exhibit deficiencies in administering time entry and payroll functions; and
WHEREAS, Since OnePhilly launched, approximately one in five payroll payments appears to have required some form of retroactive or miscellaneous adjustment to time and/or pay. As the City contends with ongoing issues with OnePhilly, hearings to assess the current state and use of the program and solutions to any continued problems is appropriate; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, THAT THE CITY COUNCIL OF PHILADELPHIA, Authorizes the Fiscal Stability and Intergovernmental Cooperation Committee to hold hearings investigating and seeking solutions for problems with the OnePhilly system in light of ongoing issues and inefficiencies which are compromising the City’s basic functions and public trust.
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