Phoenix Pay System - Shit's Horrible

[daftandbarmy]

CBC is reporting that, given two independent reviews of Phoenix prior to go-live, the staff at PSPC decided to give the minister the rosier one. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/minister-not-briefed-on-independent-phoenix-analysis-1.3773148

In reading the CBC story, it appears that at go live the system had never been tested end-to-end; there was no detailed test plan; and there was no fallback plan if rollout didn't work.

Anyone with project management experience feel free to chime in, but that does not sound like anything that respected PMBOK.

Sadly, this is pretty standard for big IT projects from what I've seen.

Only yesterday, in fact, I was having coffee with one of the 'little people' in a giant systems project going on right now, that we have been involved in from the periphery. She was brought in to act as the 'voice from the field' but has been steamrolled by all the suits with the letters after their names. The Project Manager, of course, has tight timelines to meet so is ignoring pretty much anything, like what the field and clients actually need, because it interferes with the 'milestone deliverables' (there's a free buzzword for you).

She is convinced it will be a train crash when, and if, it gets launched. Price tag? 10s of millions of $ of course.

If they had only hired us https://www.berlineaton.com/blog/how-to-lead-great-big-it-projects-4-tips-for-project-champions-

 

[Lightguns]

CBC is reporting that, given two independent reviews of Phoenix prior to go-live, the staff at PSPC decided to give the minister the rosier one. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/minister-not-briefed-on-independent-phoenix-analysis-1.3773148

In reading the CBC story, it appears that at go live the system had never been tested end-to-end; there was no detailed test plan; and there was no fallback plan if rollout didn't work.

Anyone with project management experience feel free to chime in, but that does not sound like anything that respected PMBOK.

Funny, we cant get a thing past the departmental RFC committee without a back out plan in place. 

 

[c_canuk]

yeah, cause you're a little person who can only see the little details, those in the ivory towers can see everything so they don't need to follow the rules. bigger view is always better, never mind the loss of detail, they can see everything![/sarcasm]

also, this seems about right with the finger pointing.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2013-09-20

 

[Colin Parkinson]

So my Manager just advised me that no one is getting their acting pay, because if they add your acting pay for say a 1 week period, your pay will completely stop once that 1 week period ends. The local compensation clerks are keeping records they will input when Phoenix is fixed..........

 

[dapaterson]

Thus far, my experiences with Acting Pay have been different.  I have seen:

1. Retro acting pay put on a separate payment, where pension contributions were deducted, but the retro pay not paid out.

2. Acting pay at the base rate of the higher classification for the acting period, which is less than the substantive rate of pay.  Or, in other words, do the job of the boss and take a pay cut.

3. Acting pay at a higher rate of pay that does not exist anywhere on the pay table, because they are applying the 4% rule instead of the "next higher incentive with a minimum increase" rule.


Of course, pay statements don't show your annual rate of pay, so if you're not conversant with the conversion factor from biweekly to annual, you may not notice that your pay rate is wrong.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Meanwhile, to play on the old saying, technical briefings will continue until morale improves ...

Members of the media are invited to a technical briefing on the latest steps taken to address issues with the Phoenix pay system.

Date: February 8, 2017

Time: 11 a.m. (EST)

Location: National Press Theatre
150 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario

Senior officials will deliver remarks and answer questions from the media ...

 

[dapaterson]

So how, exactly, does someone get a one-time payment in error of $662,777?  Are there no reviews in the system?  Did no one look at that number and say "Hey, maybe there's something wrong here - let's investigate before we click OK?"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-overpayments-ottawa-70-million-1.3969455

 

[Remius]

I love how they are saying to just hold onto it for now.

It affects taxes just a bit I would think...

On the flip side you could just let it sit and gain interest I guess.

What a fiasco.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

So how, exactly, does someone get a one-time payment in error of $662,777?  Are there no reviews in the system?  Did no one look at that number and say "Hey, maybe there's something wrong here - let's investigate before we click OK?"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-overpayments-ottawa-70-million-1.3969455

The real issue here is: How come FINTRAC didn't automatically clic in and wonder where that money was coming from and started an investigation into the Federal government for money laundering?  ;D

 

[tree hugger]

I've had a host of personal issues with phoenix/pay centre.  MY current problem is being paid approx. $400/pay less than I should (since mid Nov).  When you call the pay centre, they are glorified message takers and cannot provide any info.  The "compensation advisors" are mysterious people who know one knows and you just have to believe they'll call you back....eventually.... :

 

[Eye In The Sky]

The "compensation advisors" are mysterious people who know one knows and you just have to believe they'll call you back....eventually.... :

Oh, you are assuming they are people... ^-^

 

[Occam]

I live in Ontario, and work in Quebec.  These are the final pay statements for the 2015 and 2016 years, showing YTD totals.  Phoenix took over in early 2016.  The Phoenix team assures us that Phoenix did not change anything regarding tax deductions at source and that all is well...we beg to differ.

 

[dapaterson]

Overall, the amount looks about the same (roughly $15K in taxes); it's just the apportionment that's different.  And since you put it all on one return, it should be (more or less) a wash.

 

[dapaterson]

And now, Phoenix performance and service standards:

http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/remuneration-compensation/paye-centre-pay/mise-a-jour-phenix-phoenix-updates-eng.html

My take on it: They are claiming a capacity of 100K transactions per month.  In January, there were about 77K extra-duty payments processed.  Therefore, there is capacity to reduce the backlog by 23K transactions per month.

There are currently 290K transactions backlogged beyond the service standard date.

Therefore, to clear the current backlog will take 290k / 23K months, or 12 1/2 months - in other words, the current backlog will not be cleared until March, 2018.

 

[Occam]

Overall, the amount looks about the same (roughly $15K in taxes); it's just the apportionment that's different.  And since you put it all on one return, it should be (more or less) a wash.

That's what we're hoping.  It's the Phoenix team claiming that they didn't touch deductions of taxes that has us shaking our heads.  Someone broke something in the transition...

 

[dapaterson]

That's what we're hoping.  It's the Phoenix team claiming that they didn't touch deductions of taxes that has us shaking our heads.  Someone broke something in the transition...

Or, possibly, fixed it - unless you were filing two returns in the past, you don't know - maybe they were getting the amounts wrong between Fed and Quebec in the past.

 

[Occam]

Or, possibly, fixed it - unless you were filing two returns in the past, you don't know - maybe they were getting the amounts wrong between Fed and Quebec in the past.

Nope, we verified the 2015 figures against our returns - Fed tax should be slightly higher than QC tax.  We also verified it against some friends working for other Fed gov't departments in QC.  The Phoenix numbers are wrong.  It appears to be unique to those of us living in ON but working in QC.  Something got programmed incorrectly.

 

[dapaterson]

Nope, we verified the 2015 figures against our returns - Fed tax should be slightly higher than QC tax.  We also verified it against some friends working for other Fed gov't departments in QC.  The Phoenix numbers are wrong.  It appears to be unique to those of us living in ON but working in QC.  Something got programmed incorrectly.

Phoenix make a mistake?  That's unpossible.

That's like telling me that during an acting assignment, I should have been paid at a rate of pay from the collective agreement, and not a rate that someone in Miramichi made up.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Am I the only one skeptical about trying to lure pay-fix specialists into a system where their proposed incentive pay may be tied up in the system they have to fix?  Or is it too much like the attached Dilbert comic?

Struggling to make improvements to its troubled pay system, Ottawa is now offering financial incentives to attract qualified employees to address the Phoenix program.

The Treasury Board made the announcement today by news release, saying it will offer one time payments of $4,000, temporarily increase overtime rates from time and a half to double-time and temporarily drop restrictions on the amount of vacation that compensation advisors can carry over.

The federal government hopes this will improve the "recruitment and retention of compensation advisors," desperately needed to reduce the backlog of pay problems that tens of thousands of public servants are currently experiencing.

Data obtained by Radio Canada earlier this month, shows that nearly half of all public servants are being under paid, over paid, or not paid at all ...

From the Treasury Board info-machine:

The Government of Canada’s compensation advisor community is integral to the ongoing development and maintenance of the public service pay system. Employees, including those in the HR community, have been working hard to resolve pay-related issues.

Today, the Government of Canada announced it will be providing an incentive package to enhance the recruitment and retention of compensation advisors to address pay administration system issues related to the implementation of Phoenix.

The incentive package will apply to compensation advisors at the AS 01, AS 02 and AS 03 group and levels, who work at the Public Service Pay Centre (including the satellite offices) and within departments and agencies, and who are currently eligible for the Compensation Advisor Retention Allowance.

In addition, an expedited, independent review process will be established at Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) for compensation advisor job descriptions and classification grievances.

Since the implementation of Phoenix in February 2016, one key challenge the government has faced is the capacity to deal with volume challenges. Central to this was the loss of knowledge and expertise when compensation advisors were workforce adjusted in the lead up to 2015 as a result of the centralization of the pay administration functions. Retaining this employee expertise could have provided the necessary resources to deal with ongoing pay and compensation matters with the new system, avoiding the current capacity issues ...

 

[CountDC]

Dear public service workers - please push harder on the fixing of Phoenix.  Latest word is we need you to have it fixed by 2020 when the plan is for the military to join you on the system as treasury board thinks we all should share in the misery.  Hopefully in that 3 years you will be able to finally force the government to fix it so my pay doesn't get screwed the same as yours.

Thank you.