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A CLOSER LOOK AT OAS

OAS CREATION

A review of administrative services throughout the Executive Offices was launched in April 2005 by the Governor’s Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Budget. The Review Team was asked to determine what steps should be taken to improve the quality and operating efficiency of administrative support throughout the Executive Offices. Findings were considered and a decision was made to create a centralized Administrative Services organization within the Office of the Budget to support the Executive Offices.

 
OAS serves "customer" agencies by placing emphasis on standardized, streamlined business processes, and the leveraging of expertise within specialized teams. These teams become intricately involved in various Commonwealth Enterprise and Executive Office-specific business process re-engineering and policy setting initiatives.

 

SERVICE CENTER APPROACH

The OAS is a “service center” organization that reports service level agreement (SLA) performance metrics to each customer organization on a quarterly basis. These SLA reports detail volumes, percentages of performance goals met, and service-level exceptions (with explanations) by service category. 

OUR CUSTOMERS

A listing of agencies within the Executives Offices (i.e., the OA, OB and boards & commissions historically served within the Executive Offices agency) as well as “service-fee” customer agencies that have entered into interagency agreements with the OAS for budget management, purchasing, and invoice processing is available on our OAS Customer Agencies page.

 

SERVICE FEE OPTION

“Service-fee” customer agencies have been able to enter into agreements with the OAS to gain access to only those administrative services they need to support their agency’s core mission. Consequently, these customer agencies have been able to cope with personnel losses (staff attrition, retirements, etc.) while significantly reducing their administrative personnel overhead costs.  Service-fee customers are billed in conjunction with the biweekly payroll process in SAP, which details work performed and the hours consumed by a standard, flat hourly rate.

 
If you represent an agency interested in discussing the service-fee offering available from the OAS, please feel free to contact Mike Richart, Director of the Bureau of Planning & Management, at mirichart@pa.gov or Kathy Wallace, Director of the Bureau of Budget Administration, at kwallace@pa.gov.