Michigan state employees question progress on new software system

LANSING – Several Michigan state government employees and their unions are questioning reported progress in fixing glitchy new budgeting software that has delayed parts of paychecks to an unknown number of state workers. 

Gov. Rick Snyder's administration launched the Statewide Integrated Governmental Management Application, or SIGMA, on Oct. 1. It's a massive, $178 million software package that replaced dozens of outdated systems throughout state government, including employee time sheets and expense reimbursements.  

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There were problems right away. Screens froze or timed out. Error messages popped up. Hundreds of state workers were underpaid because the system couldn't process overtime they worked or the reimbursement requests they submitted for travel or supplies they had paid for with their own money.

The state employs nearly 50,000 people, about 14,000 of whom live and work in Greater Lansing. 

But officials from Snyder's State Budget Office and CGI, the global tech company with Lansing offices that built SIGMA, put in long nights and weekends to fix the glitches. As of last week, they'd largely been successful, Budget Office spokesman Kurt Weiss said. 

When employee timesheets aren't properly processed, they are paid a default paycheck based on their normal work schedule, without overtime. In mid-October, about 1,900 default paychecks were issued, but that number had dropped to 202 by late November, fewer than was typical before SIGMA launched.  

Help desk calls on time and expenses dropped from nearly 1,500 per pay period in October to just over 400 in the last pay period in November, Weiss said. At minimum, a combined $686,000 in expense reimbursements will be paid to 7,240 employees on Thursday, representing about 80% of all submitted reimbursement requests fully approved.  

Compared to the old system, there are more reimbursement requests in SIGMA, though dollar amounts are smaller, "likely a combination of seasonal anomalies for routine travelers and the technical issues we are working to resolve resulting in employees submitting more frequent, smaller reimbursement requests," Weiss said. 

As of Wednesday, about 4,400 reimbursement requests were in "draft" status in the system, meaning employees had started a request but hadn't submitted it, and another 4,000 were submitted but not yet approved. Most of those requests were for less than $20. 

Fixing the glitches has not cost the state any extra money on the CGI contract, Weiss said. 

"Looking at all of the facets of SIGMA and how huge this rollout has been, touching so many parts of state government, this has been an extremely successful implementation thus far," Weiss said in an email to the State Journal. "Michigan went live with more functionality than any comparably-sized state and did so without modifying the software, within budget and faster than any other state." 

But several state employees continue to report frustrations with SIGMA and question some of the Budget Office's numbers. The system often times out or freezes up before employees can even begin the reimbursement request, some said, for example, meaning more employees may be owed money than the system reflects. 

Any employees whose reimbursement requests were not processed last week will not be paid until after Christmas.

The Michigan Corrections Organization is "definitely hearing from more than a number of officers that are having problems," said Andy Potter, the union's chief of staff. "You're talking, this is a problem concerning thousands of dollars and many hours of overtime and otherwise. This is a much bigger problem than typical." 

The state has a history of problems with new software. In recent years, for example, glitchy automated software has wrongly accused thousands of Michiganders of unemployment fraud and told thousands of others they owed taxes that they didn't.

Early this year, state auditors warned that the state's technology agency had not fully implemented a project management tool and so couldn't say whether projects were on time, on budget or met expectations. 

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In response to its technology issues, the state's Department of Technology, Management & Budget changed its approach. Instead of rolling out big systems all at once, the department has begun to roll them out in pieces, fixing issues along the way, testing more and involving employees who will actually use the system as they do. 

This summer, Snyder hired David DeVries as DTMB director, plucking him from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, where DeVries had helped clean up after a massive hack in 2015. 

Weiss has said the state fully tested SIGMA before rollout, but several state workers and their unions said whatever the state did hasn't been good enough. 

"When it comes to somebody's paycheck, they should have been able to test the crap out of that and not have anything other than the user error issues," said Liza Estlund Olson, executive director of the Service Employees International Union Local 517M. "It should have worked better." 

Contact Justin A. Hinkley at (517) 377-1195 or jhinkley@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley. Sign up for his email newsletter, SoM Weekly, at on.lsj.com/somsignup.