State officials report Core NV ERP on track; seek remaining one‑shot funds

Brian Boles, director of the Office of Project Management and the Core NV project, told the Assembly Committee on Government Affairs that the state has replaced its legacy finance system and is moving to bring human resources functions online as part of a phased enterprise resource planning deployment with vendor CGI.

"CGI Advantage 4 system will replace our currently current legacy systems," Boles said. He described Core NV as a statewide ERP effort to consolidate financial and human resources data into a single system to reduce manual interfaces, improve reporting and business intelligence, and streamline administrative work.

The presentation laid out a two‑phase rollout. Phase 1A (financial systems) went into production on Jan. 1, 2025, Boles said. Phase 1B — the HR and payroll component — is slated for June 30, 2025. Phase 2 will follow after both parts are in production and will add grants lifecycle management, procurement, travel, vendor self‑service, debt management, recruitment, benefits administration and other modules.

Brady Phillips, administrator with the Office of Project Management, answered members’ budget questions and said the Core NV effort was funded initially from a one‑shot appropriation that totaled about $160 million for the ERP effort. Phillips said roughly $60 million has been expended to date and the project is requesting that the remaining balance — reported as $98,800,000 — be rolled forward to the next biennium to complete work and provide a fund source for final implementation and closeout activities. "That current ask currently sits at 98,800,000.0," Phillips said.

Boles described recent testing milestones. The project completed a parallel payroll run against a previously paid file and reported "over a 99 plus percent accuracy" on that payroll conversion. He also said end‑to‑end user acceptance testing for HR scripts achieved a 98.9% pass rate. Boles said conversion activities, interface discovery and final report development are ongoing and that instructor‑led training for end users is underway with classes beginning April 1.

Committee members pressed project leaders on security, disaster recovery and governance given Nevada’s prior Smart 21 effort that was decommissioned in 2023. Boles said the SQL‑hosted solution is a software‑as‑a‑service hosted by CGI on infrastructure located in the contiguous United States; the project contracted for greater than 99% uptime and vendor disaster‑recovery arrangements. On contract structure, Boles said the state moved from time‑and‑materials arrangements to a deliverable‑based payment model so vendor compensation is tied to milestones.

Phillips and Boles said the Office of Project Management (OPM) expects to wind down after the project is fully implemented and transition steady‑state operations to the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), with support from the State Controller’s Office and Department of Human Resource Management where appropriate. Phillips said the project is requesting positions and funds in the one‑shot to stand up production support during the transition and that many project staff will be considered for roles in the OCIO production unit.

Committee members raised questions about long‑term ongoing costs, whether additional appropriations will be required after the next biennium and whether federal trade or procurement actions could affect a Canadian‑based parent company. Boles and Phillips said current contracts and hosting arrangements were negotiated to maintain data in the U.S. and that ongoing SaaS fees and local vendor support are anticipated in the production budget.

The presenters credited vendor partners CGI, project management partners, and the independent IV&V firm Plante Moran for the rapid schedule; Boles characterized the finance deployment as the fastest such upgrade CGI had executed for Advantage in the vendor’s history.

No formal action or vote occurred during the committee’s presentation and question period.