Understanding Post Planning and Administration

Post plan is the main component in post management. It is built by personnel in the HR department (referred to as “planners” in this documentation) and it lists the numbers of posts available for distribution for each pay grade for a specific budgeting unit in a given fiscal cycle. Hence, a post can be viewed the basis for the calculation of employee-related costs in German Public Sector. As a post plan gets approved by the Government, its budget is then distributed to individual agencies for staffing. Agencies can now assign their workforce to available posts.

A post plan is valid for one fiscal year. For agencies that work with 2-year plans, post plans can be created and developed for two years simultaneously.

A post plan includes one or more post plan rows. Within a post plan, a post plan row is created for each post type, grade and rank where posts are added in the planning phase, and managed (staff, cut, reclassify, and so on) in the administration phase.

Typically a post plan goes through a cycle where it begins with planning, making necessary changes based on requirements of the fiscal year, and sending it off for approval. Once the approval is granted, the post plan enters the cleanup phase where all change requests are addressed. Lastly, the post plan can be activated and be ready for implementation (the administration phase).

The post planning phase involves these planning activities:

• Creating a post plan

• Modifying the post plan based on requirements

• Approving the post plan for implementation in the next planning cycle

Post management supports the creation of post plans in two ways: create new from scratch or by cloning from the one used in the previous planning cycle.

In the planning phase, the planner can perform these updates to the post plan based on the requirements that are given:

• Add or remove post plan rows.

• Modify post plan row information (for example, change post type, grade, or rank for newly created, not copied, post plans).

• Add or remove posts in post plan rows, modify post information (for example, number of posts created, post fraction and department for which posts are created.

• Add KU or KW remarks (change requests) in post plan rows.

In a newly created 2-year plan, the only action that the administrator can do on the first year regarding posts is to add them to post plan rows (this restriction does not apply if both plan years of a 2-year plan are derived from a copied plan, in which case all active actions are available for use). As for the second year, the administrator can select which actions to perform on posts, how many of them are impacted and update post fraction if necessary. For example, the planner may advise the administrator to decrement or cut a post (as a cost-cutting measure) when the post plan is implemented in the future.

The list of actions that are available for use in the planning phase is established on the Post Management – Setup Action Table page.

After all the necessary updates are made, a post plan row is ready for approval. In order for a post plan budget to be eligible for approval, each of its post plan rows has to be approved.

A system user (for example, a clerk or administration personnel) can approve or deny post plan rows on behalf of actual approvers, who may not be available to sign off on post plan rows in person (for example, head of a government agency).

Users can make changes to post plan rows that have been approved or denied. Saving changes to approved or denied post plan rows updates their status to Changed. After reviewing the changes, users need to approve or deny post plan rows again.

After the planning has finished (copying of plan, changes added to plan) and all budgeting units that are associated to the plan year have been is approved (for 2-year cycle, all budgeting units for both plan years must be approved), it is ready for the cleanup phase.

At this time, the plan can be finalized. The system provides the Prepare Cleanup AE process to prepare the plan data for the cleanup process. Among other things, this process creates new posts defined in the post plan, copies occupancy list of post plan rows and takes care of remarks. It also removes all associations to terminated rows for the new fiscal year.

During the cleanup phase, the system provides useful messages that pertain to the cleanup effort. For example, it shows information on posts that might come in from other post plan rows, as well as modifications that are already submitted from a different post plan row.

When all discrepancies have been addressed (for example, target number matches current plan number), a post plan row can be saved and status set to done if all requests from a planner are fulfilled. When all the requested changes are processed and all post plan rows are cleaned up, the plan can be activated for implementation.

See Also

The Prepare for Plan Cleanup section in the Understanding Post Plan Processes topic.

A post plan is officially moved over to the administration phase when it’s set to an active status.

During the administration phase, the administrator can modify the plan throughout a fiscal year. The system provides a different component (with a similar look and feel as the component used for post planning) for plan administration. The administrator can look up post plans to work on by post, or by payee, and perform these activities:

• Add new posts to existing post plan rows.

• Add new post plan rows.

• Update existing post plan rows and posts during the current fiscal year.

• Assign payees to vacant posts (manual or automatic through the post staff process (GPS_ATSTF).

• Perform actions on posts, such as relocate, reclassify, increment, decrement, cut, reserve, and block.

During the administration phase, if something happens (for example, budget revisions occur at the Government level and change the budget plan) and it causes the post plan (currently in implementation) to change, an amendment plan can be created to replace the current post plan.

A post plan is built to support one fiscal year at a time. German Public Sector supports both single-year and 2-year post planning with an option set at the installation level.

For 2-year post planning, a plan is built and implemented for 2 consecutive years. From the planning component, some modifications made to the first plan year are refreshed and displayed on the page for the second plan year. The planner can navigate from one plan year to another via a hyperlink, or by searching for a particular plan year using the search component.

Post targets for the first year have a direct impact on the second plan year. The first plan year’s target is forwarded to the second year. The system calculates the target for the second plan year using the first year’s target plus post changes (addition and subtraction of posts) that are made to the second plan year.

For example, suppose that the system has a 2-year post plan for 2013-2014, and the current target total number for post plan row A8 in year 2013 is 20.

• If 2 posts need to be cut to save costs in year 2013, then:

  Target total for post plan row A8 in year 2013 becomes: 20 – 2 = 18

• If another post needs to be cut in 2014 (the second plan year), then:

  Target total for post plan row A8 in year 2014 becomes: 18 – 1 = 17

• If post plan row A9 has a post (decrement to A8) in year 2014, then:

  Target total for post plan row A8 in year 2014 becomes: 17 + 1 = 18

The post that is decremented from A9 to A8 becomes an incoming value (+1) to post plan row A8.

During the planning and administration phases, planners and administrators can select actions, also known as edit functions in the system, to run on post plans.

When a planner selects an edit function (except KU or KW definition), a piece of information is stored in the database as to what action needs to be performed later in the clean-up phase. This information is visible in the Clean-Up Messages section on the Post Management - Cleanup page, and the administrator must manually process every edit function planned.

When an administrator selects an edit function in the administration phase, the administrator manually processes the action in the same phase.

This table lists edit functions that are delivered for use in post management:

When a planner selects an edit function to perform on a post, the system does not take into consideration the fractions of posts that exist in the post plan. The planner needs to make sure that he or she knows the fraction of the post on which the edit function processes, for example, the fraction of the post to be decremented. The system shows the fraction to decrement from a plan and will only allow posts with the correct fraction to be selected for the decrement edit function.

Administrators perform actions on posts on the Post Administration - Post Edit Request page. The system lists the edit functions that can be processed on a post based on these rules:

For example, if the status of a post is Vacant, all delivered edit functions are available for selection when the post is edit mode with a couple of exceptions: the post cannot be cut if it is not created in the administration phase. Also, the post cannot be reset if deleting the effective date would leave it in the status of New.

The enforcement of post management security is based on access rights by budgeting unit and by department. Security needs to be implemented so that prompts, post plan searches as well as the navigation tree all work in accordance to the security requirements defined by German Public Sector agencies.

For instance, suppose we have a single plan defined using the Kameralistik budgeting system with this information:

Using the security components provided for post management, the administrator can set up security access for any of these configurations:

• Access to everything under plan 01.

• Access to everything under chapter 0101.

• Access to everything under organization A in chapter 0101.

• Access to everything under title 422 01 in plan 01.

• Access to everything under title 422 01 in organization A in chapter 0101.

• Access to service class group ED in title 422 01 in organization A in chapter 0101.

• Access to everything under chapter 0101, plus service class group ED in title 428 01 in organization A in chapter 0102.

See Also Setting Up Post Management Security