Phoenix pay debacle a federal disaster

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on May 31, 2018.

A federal auditor general’s report this week into the rollout of the Phoenix pay system confirms that a slow-motion train wreck has indeed occurred.

It also gives some clues about nebulous thought process that has kept box car after box car plowing into the tangled mess of accounting for the last 28 months.

It doesn’t fully explain, however, why no one in a top leadership position has had the sense to pull back on the throttle, or pick a different track.

That’s against a backdrop that a current backlog of complaints that the Government of Canada got paycheques wrong sits at 600,000.

Auditor general Michael Ferguson’s report, released Tuesday, said solutions to problems in the accounting software could cost $1.2 billion to fix and take several years to implement.

Other than that, what did you think of the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

The second such report into the failed system sheds more details of the botched cost saving initiative that was greenlit by the federal Conservative government in 2015 and implemented by the Liberal government in early 2016.

Both parties now blame the other after — in the first three months — about one-third of federal employees reported they had been underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all.

The reaction was to expand what had been a limited rollout to many more departments.

Troubles compounded, unsurprisingly, ever since then. Monthly assurances have been repeatedly issued that solutions were close at hand.

It’s easy to glance at the facts — all for a collective cost savings of $70 million per year and less work for managers — and roll our collective eyes about exactly how bad and how inefficient government can be.

People may not be quick to shed a tear for federal employees but should themselves imagine what life would be like without a paycheque or two, or four, then be forced to wait a year or more for a straight answer.

Last year coast guard members and northern researchers returned from long deployments only to find they’d been evicted or had their utilities disconnected when pre-dated cheques bounced.

Those in southern Alberta reported directly to the News that travel allowances to CFB Suffield went unpaid. Overtime, expense reimbursements, or any irregular item in a pay packet caused immense confusion in the circuitry, it seemed.

In one case reported in the News, a local woman had to wait several months for separation pay and final paycheque among several months of back pay after she’d had enough and found another job.

The unions representing the workers have for at least two years been asking for answers, at one point challenging the government that they could legitimately design a better system.

The answer, says Ferguson, is to repair the system, rather than start anew.

Ferguson also said a so-called “obedient culture” in public service was partly to blame, meaning top employees were not willing to rock the boat or run afoul of managers (perhaps politicians as well) with warnings the pay system was faulty.

Some consideration must be given to the fact that the federal government is undoubtedly the most complex organization in Canada, by several magnitudes.

Paying several hundred thousand employees, who work in dozens of departments under dozens of collective agreements, involving thousands of job descriptions, is not easily done.

That’s not to mention tens of thousands of managers and contract workers.

It’s clear that a pen, a chequebook and actual humans in the accounts payable department are not a viable solution in an age of slimmer government.

However, the saga is nothing but a testament to people’s willingness to believe in all gain for no pain, the infallibility and superiority of new, technological innovation.

In many cases, such benefits materialize, but we should be able to recognize a disaster in the making, and say stop this train, I want to get off.