Lib government pay system mess affects 80,000 workers

mark_alfred wrote:

...It was the Liberals who implemented it this year despite warnings not to.  Erin Weir is the NDP Public Services Critic, who sits on the Government Operations Committee, so he would know.

As I've pointed out, and as anyone familiar with a shift of this magnitude would know, there probably wasn't much choice. The old system was being phased out, and thus it would be difficult, if not impossible to go back to it.

As I've also said, this is not an uncommon event. It should be uncommon, but unfortunately...

California sues SAP over payroll system

Payroll system failure in Washington, DC

"Worst failure of public adminstration" in Australia

LA school district payroll system failure

Here's a site with four spectacular IT system failures with a total cost of about $4 billion

SAP-IBM payroll system woes fouled up nurses' pay

Payroll error for University of Colorado

When one reads of all these failures, one is tempted to say, you know, just go back to the old checkbook thing.

And here, from Public Works and Government Services Canada

Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative

Quote:

Why modernize?

The federal government pay system, which is operated by PWGSC, was more than 40 years old. It had become increasingly difficult to maintain and it relied on outdated technology that put the sustainability of the administration of pay at risk. In addition, pay services have become fragmented and decentralized. The capability of the old pay system and the accompanying business processes were insufficient to meet the increasing employee and client demands.

Transforming the pay system

To address these issues, the Government of Canada (GC) approved the Transformation of Pay Administration (TPA) Initiative in 2009 to transform the GC's pay administration system, renew business processes and consolidate pay services.

Benefits for the Government of Canada and its Employees

The TPA Initiative is aligned with the Government of Canada's overall commitment to Canadian taxpayers for more cost-effective public service administration. The Initiative is an example of using technology and centralizing services to simplify and standardize administrative functions and reduce unnecessary costs across government.

Some of the benefits the government and its employees will realize as a result include:

1. Cost effective services contributing to savings of over $70 million per year starting 2016-17;
2. Modern, sustainable pay system using commercially-available software products;
3. Streamlined business services offered through the Public Service Pay Centre in Miramichi, NB;
4. Creation of 550 public service jobs in the Miramichi region by 2015-16;
5. Paperless environment and greener operations;
6. Increased functionality for employees and managers.

Pay Modernization Project

The Pay Modernization Project replaced the government's outdated pay system with "Phoenix", a modern, commercial off-the-shelf solution, which includes streamlined and modernized business processes. Phoenix provides increased automation and self-service, as well as seamless integration with the Government of Canada's Human Resources Management System (GC HRMS, PeopleSoft).

There you have it folks, the old system was already broken (and it can't be less broken 7 years later). The government wanted to cut costs, and throw some nice office jobs to the East Coast. Oh yeah, and it was 'greener'.

Had I been in charge, I would have been more cautious, but they didn't ask me.

What should probably happen now is a class action suit against the federal government, also naming IBM, by the workers who have not been properly paid. Perhaps undertaken by the PSAC on behalf of it's members. In that way, it may be possible for the government of Canada to sue IBM, and recover some of the money they've thrown away in this debacle. At the same time, they may also be able to compensate the improperly paid emplyees for some the grief they've gone through.

When I read that in my head it sounds like a bird call.

mark_alfred wrote:

Quote:

When I read that in my head it sounds like a bird call.

Hinterland Babble -- Who's Who: 

"A farcical, sportive, playfully vexing call, the sound of lolool is instantly recognized by the inhabitants of Babble..."

RevolutionPlease wrote:

...So, where are the calls for a solution?...

Well, you've struck at the heart of the matter. The problem is, as others in the same situation have found, there are no solutions. The only available solution is to desperately try to get the Phoenix system up and running, and start a contingency plan to decide what plan B might consist of if the present system can't be made to work. And that Plan B would only mean another ten years of screw-ups.

As I've said, and as the links I've posted show, this is not an uncommon problem, and one of the features of it is it's intractable nature. Read about the payroll screw-up in Queensland, Australia. That joke started off in 2003, and ten years later was still completely snafu.

I worked on a cruise ship once, and they had a disarmingly simple system. On payday you lined up outside the crew bar, and when your turn came, you were handed a sheet to sign, and an envelope with a bunch of USA Ben Franklins. The standing in line part wasn't great, and you had to be a bit careful about what you did with your cash, but it was very simple, and it worked.

Rev Pesky wrote:

RevolutionPlease wrote:

...So, where are the calls for a solution?...

Well, you've struck at the heart of the matter. The problem is, as others in the same situation have found, there are no solutions. The only available solution is to desperately try to get the Phoenix system up and running, and start a contingency plan to decide what plan B might consist of if the present system can't be made to work. And that Plan B would only mean another ten years of screw-ups.

As I've said, and as the links I've posted show, this is not an uncommon problem, and one of the features of it is it's intractable nature. Read about the payroll screw-up in Queensland, Australia. That joke started off in 2003, and ten years later was still completely snafu.

I worked on a cruise ship once, and they had a disarmingly simple system. On payday you lined up outside the crew bar, and when your turn came, you were handed a sheet to sign, and an envelope with a bunch of USA Ben Franklins. The standing in line part wasn't great, and you had to be a bit careful about what you did with your cash, but it was very simple, and it worked.

The problems with the payroll system are besides the point.

The first level of manager with the authorization to cut cheques should do so in the departments affected. Hours worked are not a mystery. They can at least cut cheques for 70% which would cover the taxes that should be withheld plus some and work out the details later.

I like the notion of not paying any minister or MP including Trudeau until the such time that all other government employees are paid. Throw in whichever top level civil servants that hold responsibility for solving the issue.

Hire an outside firm of lawyers/accountants for the affected employees to collect information on financial damages incurred by those who haven't been paid and pay that within a year.

No employer would get away with this. Imagine if Walmart had this problem. The government has virtually limitless money and manpower available. Paying people what they are owed is not rocket science.

Upper management heads should roll for not fixing this problem before it had to be escalated to elected representatives.

 

 

no reason not to. ya still gotta eat in the future too.

poor analogy though.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

This sort of thing is why I'm always a bit skeptical of the need for "publicly owned" industry.

If the state decided to nationalize, say, cell-phone service, and nobody could make or receive a call for the last eight months, would we say:

1.  That's unacceptable -- please put someone back in charge who can make my phone work.  This is 2016.

2.  A few hiccups are par for the course.  I just send paper letter "instant messages" to my friends now!  It's all good!

Um, isn't this a private enterprise outfit that developed this wonderful program?

Quote:

Um, isn't this a private enterprise outfit that developed this wonderful program?

Um, then shouldn't this thread be titled "IBM pay system mess affects 80,000 workers"?

An article from Barrie McKenna of the Globe & Mail Report on Business. He deals with both the Phoenix pay system and Shared Services Canada. That's the government dept that caused the resignation of the Chair of StatsCan last week. I'll put the link here but the article is behind a paywall. I'll quote from the newspaper article.

No excuse for Ottawa's bungled technology

Quote:

...Canada isn't some tin-pot country that can't pay its workers, run a computer or produce timely data. It's a G7 country, a modern advanced economy that should be a model of good governance.

...Turn back the clock to 2010. Stephen Harper's Conservative government was eager to demonstrate it could wring billions of dollars in savings out of a fat government bureaucracy it neither liked nor trusted.

Two of the signature initiatives that emerged from this effort was the centralized Phoenix pay systems and the birth of Shared Services Canada, a $1.9 billion super agency that would consolidate all of the government technology systems.

...Both have been unmitigated disasters. The fallout from these moves continues to reverberate through the government.

...Statscan's website routinely goes down on busy data-release days.

The problems at Shared Services, which consolidated the information technology of 43 departments, go way (sic) beyond Statscan. The federal Auditor-General concluded in a report this year that Shared Services operations are so dogged by hidden costs, delays, security problems and poor accounting that potential savings remain 'largely unknown'.

...Just like Shared Services, Phoenix was supposed to save the government money - $70 million a year - by consolidating myriad of pay systems spanning 300,000 workers in more than 100 departments. Most of the first year savings have now been wiped out.

A big part of the problem can be traced to a decision by the Conservatives to create a new payroll-processing centre in Miramachi, N.B.

...Ottawa has since be forced to add pay specialists in Gatineau, and at temporary offices in Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, and Sherbrooke.

...Efficiency was never the main reason for choosing Miramachi. Putting the payroll centre in the city was political compensation for the closing of the long gun registry, which had been located there.

The Conservatives fed the country a narrative about making the government leaner and more efficient. They delivered something quite different.

I don't think McKenna is a particular friend of the Liberals, so I respect his analysis of this situtaion. He places the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Conservative government.

There's a lot of unanswered questions in the above story, but here's a paragraph I found interesting:

 

Quote:

Last month Jones re-filed his paperwork but was told that because his retirement date is now in November of this year, the military won't pay out the past year of his pension. Jones said he has almost $100,000 in debt. Without the pension money he had been banking on he'll have to work full-time at his current job for 60 months to pay that debt off. 

If he can pay off a 100k debt in five years, he must be making a fair wage at his present employment. Not many people could pay off that size of debt (20k/year) at average wages.

But whatever, perhaps he's a big spender in other ways. At the same time, the year of back-pay, if it arrives will amount to 12 times $2200, before taxes, so I'm not sure how that would give him that much help. A nice present for sure, but not that big of a dent in his overall debt.

Webgear wrote:

...Rev Pesky,

I think you are missing the most important element of this article. The fact is government employees are waiting between 6 -12 months to receive their pensions is wrong.

Many ex-soldiers rely on this pension to continue in order to survive in a difficult employment environment.

Judging by his rank and time in service, I am going to assume his pension is 2200$ after taxes.

This comment appears to be based on this (from the linked article):

Quote:

He'd been told that pension payments can take six to nine months to process, so he didn't start inquiring about the delay until the spring — and when he did, he was told there was simply a backlog. The error wasn't discovered for months. 

He, along with everyone else 'had been told' that payment can take...to process. Pardon me for saying, but if I work somewhere, and they tell me that I won't receive my pension until some time after my retirement date, I file for it early. This is very common in the world of pensions. When I was getting close to being eligible for my OAP, I was notified that it was upcoming, I was able to file ahead of time, with a specified date for OAP to begin. No delay.

In this case, to begin with, he files the wrong piece of paper. It seems to me that determining the correct paperwork, and the correct time to file, is the responsibility of the claimnant. I suspect that if he had filed the correct paperwork, in a timely fashion, we wouldn't be hearing this story.

So, yes, I feel for the guy. He was expecting money to be forthcoming, and it wasn't. But I don't really see that it's necessarily the fault of the government. Yes, they should work hard to process the paperwork as fast as possible. On the other hand, someone who's spent that amount of tiime in the military must be aware of the in and outs of retiring, and the associated paperwork. After all, he couldn't have been the only person who retired at the time he did. Did he not ask someone to help out, someone to guide him through the process? That is what I would have done.

By the way, no court in this country would force someone to borrow money to pay child support. It was nice of him to do it, but I don't think it was a very good decision.

He finishes up by saying:

Quote:

...maybe they can hire some more people for Veterans Affairs so the claims can go through in 16 weeks like they claim on their website. If any of those things had occurred prior to August, I would be fine, I wouldn't be where I am now," said Jones.

And if he had filed the correct paperwork...

Martin N. wrote:

This situation is deplorable. No excuse for the Feds to break their duty of care to their employees. Whatever teething problems the Phoenix system has, there should be contingency plans alongside the new system to ensure employees are paid. Little Potato shows a lacking of character with his inattention to the plight of his government's employees. He's all hat and no cattle. Selfies before substance.

You do understand this program was started years ago by the Harper government, right? You do understand the politics behind the failure of the system,right?

As noted up thread, the initial failure of the pay program was the Conservative decision to place the pay system centre in the Maritimes, with insufficient staff to handle the expected load. This very poor planning was combined with another Conservative failure, that of the combined services program. It was all supposed to save money, but in both the pay system and the combined services programs, the results are exactly what you'd expect from very poor planning.

The failure in the Phoenix pay system is directly traceable to the Harper Conservative government, the result of an ideological agenda combined with a complete faiilure of proper planning. 

Rev Pesky wrote:

You do understand this program was started years ago by the Harper government, right? You do understand the politics behind the failure of the system,right?

you do understand who bought it has nothing to do with Justin, Katie and Gerald seeking to halt the court case pending to pay federal employees on time, right? you do understand the Liberals were warned not to impliment it, right?

 

And a little more good news on the technology front. To no one's surprise

Federal government's Canada.ca project 'off the rails'

Quote:

The federal government's bid to merge 1,500 departmental and agency websites into a single site, Canada.ca, is a year behind schedule and almost 10 times over budget. And experts warn it is on track to be another failed government IT project, like the Phoenix pay system.

"It's gone off the rails. It's a disaster," said one government source with knowledge of the project who spoke on condition of anonymity.

...The Canada.ca initiative was launched in 2013 with the goal of making it easier for people to find and use government information online. A $1.54-million contract for a new content management system, where all government websites would be moved, was awarded to Adobe in 2015.

...The contract with Adobe is now above $9.4 million, according to government figures.

The actual migration of the websites is up to the departments themselves and is to be done within existing budgets and staffing. Since 2015, eight of the largest departments have budgeted or spent more than $28 million on this project.

...This is not the first large government IT project to run into problems.

The government will spend at least $50 million this year to try to fix problems with the new Phoenix pay system, which has seen thousands of public servants underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all.

The initiative to transform the government's email system has been stalled for months because of problems with new software.

And Shared Services Canada, the agency created in 2011 to modernize IT-related services in government, has been slammed for its many missteps, particularly by the auditor general.

IT strikes me that one of the defining characteristics of the Conservatives was their tendency to centralize. Unfortunately that doesn't always work with technology.