Official: WVOASIS Not Ready for Next Phase

Lawmakers were updated Wednesday on the roll out process of the state’s new software system designed to integrate almost every function in government. 

The first phase of WVOASIS, or ‘Our Advanced Solution with Integrated Systems, was implemented in August of 2013. It’s latest phase took effect July of this year, but wasn’t necessarily the smooth transition many state officials had hoped for.

“There were round pegs into round holes and square pegs into square holes,” Rick Pickens, director of the OASIS project, told a Joint Committee on Government Organization Wednesday, “but unfortunately there was some of the opposite, round into square, square into round that we’ve had to do some work on.”

Phase C, as its designated, transitioned a lot of the back-office business functions of the state into the new system. It included things like accounts payable and receivable, contracts, purchasing, and investments.

After the initial roll out this summer, the OASIS help desk was receiving around 400 call per day from the more than 4,000 employees using the system. That number has dropped to around 100 calls per week on of Pickens’s staffers reported.

“They’re making a change from a customized system that did business exactly the way they wanted to do business,” Pickens said, “to a commercial, off the shelf software that’s been configured and customized to fit us.”

That means employees will have to get used to a new “rhythm” of processing, Pickens said, one that asks for more detailed information and takes longer to complete.

The next phase of the program, Phase D, was scheduled to roll out January 1, 2015, but the administration decided last week to hold off on that implementation when they couldn’t meet the necessary milestones.

Phase D will all 65,000 state employees. It controls payroll and HR functions, vacation time and billing.

Pickens said they are in the process of testing that system. A recent test of the old payroll system paired side-by-side with the new OASIS system, however, ended with two different results, meaning without a fix, OASIS would result in employees being paid incorrectly. 

Phase D has now been delayed by at least three months. The new system is now expected to be implemented in April.