Building a New Resource Future at CPA

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Vincent McCarthy
6 years ago
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1 Building a New Resource Future at CPA Anh Selissen, Director of Application Services Deborah Goltra, Team Lead, Tax Processing Applications August 8,

2 Goals & Objectives Fulfill mandate from Deputy Comptroller to sustain current critical tax systems and build sufficient skills needed to support them. New programmers at novice and mid-levels were needed to create a sustainable workforce for the future of CPA Develop sustainable training program around CPA specific technologies. Improve performance of technical staff through continuance training. Improve current marketing and recruitment processes. August 8,

3 Current CPA Environment The main Tax application runs on the mainframe The application was rewritten in the 90 s to combine almost all of the tax applications into one integrated application Front-ends were added to the application to enable taxpayers to file and pay returns thru the WEB and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic File Transfer (EFT) August 8,

4 Evaluation of Options Assessment to determine next steps for tax systems Rewriting custom applications into technologies that are considered modern is cost-prohibitive, complex, and risky Commercial software does not address all of the complexities of Texas tax law August 8,

5 Staffing Challenges Mainframe programmers are retiring Mainframe technologies are not being taught in most colleges and universities Recruiting, training, and retaining programmers in an environment that is politely called legacy is difficult Austin is a hot market August 8,

6 Training Program Goals Develop a flexible, modular training program Provide two types of training: Technical training to build skills with tools and technology Application training to focus on the business of the agency New role identified hire Training Coordinator focused on scheduling courses and monitoring progress through the training August 8,

7 Training Goals Include workshops as part of every class Develop documentation that can be used in formal class presentations and in self-paced training Teach the CPA way of doing things August 8,

8 Training Plan All new hires take an IT Overview to learn basic information about the CPA Novice new hires take all courses New hires with programming experience take courses to build a specific skill Existing staff can take any of the classes to build new skills or refresh old ones August 8,

9 Technical Training Languages: Natural, COBOL, Java, etc. Execution Environments: TSO, batch, Unix, etc. Databases: DB2, SQL, and other query tools Data Model and Entity Relationships Change Control productions and other Utilities Job scripting languages Job scheduling and reporting productions Change and Incident Management August 8,

10 Application Training Application training starts with an Overview of the Integrated Tax System (ITS) designed to introduce the history, terminology, and the major processes of the Tax Business Information Model (BIM) The overview is taught from the IT perspective and is offered to all IT staff Detailed classes, known as Deeper Dives, are taught for each of the BIMs August 8,

11 Training Program Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) developed and presented most of the technical courses Web-based training or vendor-supplied training was used when available The application courses were created by senior business analysts and presented by SMEs Course length varies from 30 minutes to 3 days August 8,

12 Hiring of Novices and Interns Traditional interview questions about skills and experience could not be used Interview questions were designed to identify desirable characteristics Passion for any activity, project, class, or hobby Communication skills Logical thinking August 8,

13 New Roles Mentors are assigned to new hires once they start working on simple assignments Mentors are Subject Matter Experts that help the new hire apply technical and application knowledge August 8,

14 Simple Assignments Small assignments are given to new hires to break the monotony of training and to reinforce the new skills Some assignments are given to a group of new hires with similar skills to foster teamwork and friendly competition Successes inspire confidence August 8,

15 2016 Training Statistics 36 Courses offered 61 Classes offered 145 Unique Students taught 2,282 Student-hours of training completed August 8,

16 Training Curriculum Technical courses 18 courses developed in-house totaling 86 hours 7 courses were vendor supplied totaling 52 hours 3 courses are still in development Application courses 11 courses for total of 62 hours August 8,

17 Accomplishments Created a flexible, modular, sustainable training program in about 9 months Hired and trained new employees at various skill levels Documented our complex core application Provided cross-training to existing staff Integrated Continuing Education with our Performance Evaluation process August 8,

18 Improving the Recruitment Process Build relationships with Community Colleges Create positons for paid and unpaid part-time interns Create positions for full-time novice programmers requiring little to no IT experience Use social media to market opportunities August 8,

19 Austin Community College Direct connection to people seeking an IT job Provide avenue for students to fulfill internship requirements for degree ACC Video Clark Shaffer at or August 8,

20 Contact Information Anh Selissen Deborah Goltra August 8,

CAPPS Finance or HR/Payroll Production Analyst

TEXAS COMPTROLLER OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS invites applications for the position of: CAPPS Finance or HR/Payroll Production Analyst JOB POSTING #: 3E04.16 STATE CLASSIFICATION #: 0257 STATE CLASSIFICATION TITLE: