The Government is sticking with the school pay system Novopay – for now.

Minister responsible for Novopay Steven Joyce today announced Talent2 will continue to administer the school payroll but the long-term future of the system will stay under review.

Minister responsible for Novopay Steven Joyce says the Government is staying with Novopay for now.

'The decision to stay with Novopay at this point was made very carefully after a great deal of consideration and weighing up of all the risks,” says the minister.

'The improvements we have seen in delivering school pay from pay period to pay period and the progress to date in clearing bugs, means it wouldn't be sensible to make a change at this point."

Steven says making a change now will increase the work for payroll administrators in the short-term.

'Three out of the last four pay periods have had a reported error rate of less than 0.5 per cent – which we have been advised by our independent technical reviewers is a reasonable error rate for a stable system.

'However, that is not to say that we are out of the woods yet or endorsing the current state of the pay system."

He also announced the Government will not be seeking to recover small overpayments to thousands of school staff due to errors in the payroll system. These include public holiday related defect which caused 7949 staff to be overpaid an average of $6.05 for a total of $48,106.

A previously-advised voluntary bonding configuration error that occurred in Pay Period 1 which caused 1478 staff to be overpaid an average of $64.75 for a total of $92,323.

And all other overpayments where the individual overpayment amount does not exceed $100; to a maximum of $300 in a calendar year. It is estimated that this will involve writing off a total between $200,000 and $300,000 known overpayments.

Individual staff will be notified of overpayment debt write-offs when they occur, and that the Ministry will not be seeking the repayment.

However, staff will still be able to pay it back if they wish to. Schools will also be advised and school budgets will not be affected. The amounts written off will be deducted from Ministry baselines.

Steven says the focus for the next two months will continue to be on the Novopay system remediation in which progress will continue to be monitored on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

'Staff from the Ministry, Talent 2, and schools are working hard on the remediation. I appreciate all their efforts as we work towards a business-as-usual state.”

The next key milestones are the Novopay Ministerial Inquiry, which is due to be presented to the Government at the end of this month, and the review of progress in the Remediation Plan at the end of June.

'At that point we will reassess progress and start assessing what further changes may be needed to the delivery of school payroll in the medium term. These are likely to include alterations to the service delivery model and options to revise the business processes of the school payroll to reduce the complexity in the system,” Mr Joyce says.

'The focus of the Government is to make sure school payroll returns to business as usual as quickly as possible. Progress is being made but there is still more work to be done to ensure the on-going stability of the system.”