The University Payroll/Personnel system is centrally maintained and supported. Campuses all operate or contract out operation of the system. Though by policy campuses should install all payroll/personnel software updates in the order received, in practice in some cases software releases are not installed or are modified prior to installation. To what extent should the local variation be reduced? Advantages and disadvantages to reducing local variation are listed below for consideration.

ADVANTAGES

1. Reduction of variation would reduce maintenance effort. Workload to install system updates is greater at campuses with greater local system modification.
2. Payroll and Personnel policies are common across the University. Adherence to policy would be improved if local modifications were reduced.
3. System integrity would be increased if local modifications were reduced further.
4. Opportunities for consolidated operations would be increased if local variation was reduced.

DISADVANTAGES

1. Variation among campus versions of the payroll/personnel system is considerably less than prior to the upgrade of the system. Existing variations are necessary to meet local operating needs (for example, different account structures at ucsc and ucsd) and do not significantly reduce the integrity of the system.
2. Further reduction in the variation of local systems would require changes to the base system to accommodate the needs of one or two campuses. To support such functions without adversely affecting other campuses would add significant complexity to the Payroll/Personnel system, increasing the risk of loss of integrity more than with campus-specific implementations.
3. Total elimination of local variation will result in shadow systems, reducing system integrity and increasing total University resources more than permitting some local variations in the existing base system.