About the ABT Program
On January 3, 2012 King County adopted a new business model that delivers efficiencies within the county and more effective services to county residents. This is the most significant internal technology improvement in the county’s history and now enables the county to operate as One King County.
King County’s Accountable Business Transformation Program (ABT Program) renovated the county’s business processes for human resources and benefits in March 2010. In January 2012, the ABT Program implemented new countywide business processes for financial and payroll. A month later, February 2012, a new countywide capital and operating budgeting system will be brought on board.
This new business model is comprised of industry best operating practices from public and private organizations nationwide and now provides county staff with improved access to timely, accurate and useful information to deliver better services to the public.
Prior Situation
For more than 15 years, King County used two accounting and financial systems, and two human resource/payroll systems. These four separate systems performed the central financial and human resource functions for the county, but were not integrated and didn’t work together efficiently.
County departments and agencies also followed divergent policies and procedures, used inconsistent business processes and supported multiple computing software systems. This resulted in poor integration, redundant data entry, time-wasting reconciliation, and high system maintenance, staff support and upgrade costs.
Plans for an Integrated County
In June 2003, the elected leadership of King County endorsed a vision statement for a newly integrated, countywide financial and human resource system::
“King County’s financial, human resources and budget management
functions are fully integrated, efficient and effective, and enhance
the county’s ability to provide essential services to its customers.”
The lessons learned from an earlier integration project known as the Financial System Replacement Project (FSRP) helped structure the ABT Program to successfully meet the county’s need for best business practices.
The differences between the two programs were substantial with the ABT Program having three key focus areas that were not adequately addressed by the previous effort:
- ABT Program focused on business model transformation not only a technology system change;
- ABT Program focused on understanding and managing high risk factors through a phased approach; and
- ABT Program focused on program metrics: costs, benefits, return on investment (ROI), and key performance indicators.
Learn about differences between the ABT Program and FSRP.
The county’s elected leadership adopted nine guiding principles in June 2003 to provide direction for the ABT Program:
- Ensure effective leadership, comprehensive stakeholder agreement and alignment with county goals.
- Apply the Technology Governance direction for future project efforts.
- Standardize and streamline operations and business practices to adopt best practices.
- Consolidate and integrate the computing infrastructure to eliminate redundancy.
- Reduce computer maintenance, management and service costs.
- Improve customer service, decision support, and reporting capabilities.
- Enhance existing service levels and capabilities.
- Ensure the privacy and security of financial, human resources, and budget information.<>
- Commitment to organizational and “county cultural” change must be accepted and effectively implemented.
The ABT Program Charter, adopted by the Council in October, 2006, established a comprehensive governance structure to ensure requirements and milestone are met.
ABT Program timeline
The ABT Program Timeline offers an overview of the timeframe and planning stages for the human resources, benefits, payroll, financial and budget systems. The program’s implementation timeline shares the deployment dates for each project.
The Future
The ABT Program has successfully united all human resources, finance and payroll functions into an integrated system. This is also significant in that the system will continue to grow and evolve over the years as it serves King County and its residents.
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