Phoenix Nightmare

It is unusual for government contracts to come in on budget. That seems the norm, which most people expect, sadly. There’s over-budget and then there is the “someone needs to be fired” contract. The following is an example of the government trying to implement a new pay system, a compensation system with a wide range of variables, without doing their homework thoroughly. Considering the real risk of having some problems with a software system that provides pay to the thousands and thousands of public service employees, most people would have expected the government to try a ‘pilot’ project to ensure the bugs were removed. That’s too easy. Once the government decided to do away with the long-gun registry they wanted to minimize the job loss by transferring them to handle to the new system. Sounds okay, right. Here’s the thing. The employees had no prior experience working in compensation and to make matters worse they were tasked with implementing the new pay system. There are probably not too many employees working for the Gov’t of Canada that have not had a problem with their pay cheque, in some cases not even getting paid.

With credit to CBC News, here’s a breakdown of the government’s Phoenix costs…..thus far. Simply mind-boggling.

“Tallying the Phoenix toll

$309 million: IBM contract, professional services contracts, program costs, 2009.

$210 million: $70 million per year of unrealized savings from 2016 to 2019.

$28 million: Advances to unions from 2017 to 2019.

$50 million: Building capacity, enhancing technology, supporting employees, 2016.

$142 million: Building capacity, enhancing technology, supporting employees, 2017.

$431.4 million: Building capacity, enhancing technology, supporting employees, Budget 2018.

$5.5 million: For CRA to process income tax reassessments related to Phoenix, Budget 2018.

$16 million: Researching a new pay system, Budget 2018.

Total: $1.192 billion.”

After spending $16 million “researching a new pay system”, Canadians can probably expect to pay another few hundred million for a new pay system. It is not unreasonable to think that the final costs for a pay system may be close to $2 billion. And as the money comes from the public purse, the taxpayers pocket, do you think anyone will be held accountable?