The Phoenix boondoggle
I’ve never worked on this or anything, but this is what I think happened, and the present status.
Phoenix is a bad boondoggle. The Canadian Phoenix payroll system ended up being poorly implemented and costing the government of Canada billions of dollars. Even though it was supposed to save less than 20 million a year. Talk about picking up pennies in front of the steam roller.
There was a lot of discussion about the specifics of what went wrong, but not about the poor incentives that allowed it to happen. Politicians care about votes and the next election (no surprise there). They don't care about implementation, or saving money, because why would they? They need to win enough seats to remain in power.
Not included in that article was a wild-cat strike (more specifically, a work slowdown) amongst Compensation Advisors across the public service, dating from at least 2006. Compensation Advisors in the federal public service of Canada are paid at Administration level 2 (AS-02). The level is based on a complicated analysis of responsibilities, and then the pay for the level is based on what their union negotiates employees at that level be paid at.
AS-02 employees are some of the lowest in the public service, and worst paid. You know who else is paid at that level? A lot of executive assistants. Even though the compensation system takes years to learn, but presumably executive assistants can be performing useful work after a couple of weeks on the job. Compensation advisors hated that.
The classification system (which assigns people to levels and pay grades) was developed in the 60s, and has been extremely extremely resistant to change. By that system, Compensation Advisors and Executive Assistants were at the same level, and paid the same. (The responsible union eventually negotiated a bonus for AS-02s at who worked as Compensation Advisors, so they didn't make the same salary, but it was controversial and only happened in the last ten years). Before that, all AS-02 employees made the same, minus bilingual bonuses (bonuses for employees in bilingual positions who spoke both English and French) and a bonus for AS employees who worked in actual prisons.
Canada created an office in a small New Brunswick town in order to bring employment to an economically disadvantaged area. This office was to house the long-gun registry, where they would keep a database of all rifles and shotguns legally owned in Canada. This was extremely unpopular amongst the long-gun owners, mostly because they were concerned that after registration of these firearms they would be confiscated. One of the promises that swept the Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper to power, was scrapping the long-gun registry. (Pistols already needed to be registered).
So would Conservatives close this office and lay-off everyone there, losing all the votes from this riding and neighbouring ridings forever? No no... Harper's administration thought that maintaining a registry of firearms couldn't be too much different than managing a pay system. Both have a lot of AS-02 employees. He would close the long-gun registry, but train the employees there to become compensation advisors, all in in the small New Brunswick town of Miramichi. This also let him workforce adjust (lay-off) the existing Compensation Advisors from across Canada who were illegally slowing down work (and whose union had been quite opposed to the Conservatives, even flying a plane with a sign saying "Stop Harper" above Parliament during the election).
Unfortunately for everyone, all AS-02 employees were not interchangeable, the new payroll system did not simplify the process as hoped, and many Compensation Advisors did their best to not turn over completed files to the Miramichi (the small New Brunswick town) office when their positions were eliminated (shredding or losing a lot of documents) in the several months of notice they were required to receive by their collective bargaining. (Most eventually received jobs at comparable salaries in the localities where they were originally working).
Renee Jolicoeur, Associate Deputy Minister of the the oxymoronically named Public Works and Government Services, received an award for Outstanding Achievement, from the Prime Minister himself as the Governor General (representative of the Queen) for the Phoenix system! Quoted here
"I am pleased to present the prestigious Outstanding Achievement Award to Renée Jolicoeur for her exceptional work over the course of her career. Ms. Jolicoeur is a world-class innovator who has transformed outdated government pension and pay systems into cutting edge operations that have saved taxpayers money, provided better services to Canadians, and which are envied around the world. She epitomizes the very best qualities in a public servant - namely integrity, remarkable devotion to the public and to the country, and the ability to generate results."
- Prime Minister Stephen Harper
PM presents the Outstanding Achievement Award to Renée Jolicoeur - Canada.ca
Phoenix was delivered on time and under budget as planned, hence this award... unfortunately Phoenix didn't work. The Conservatives lost the next election, the Liberals won and decided to actually implement the system that Jolicoeur had already received an award for creating, despite the many warning signs, and the system didn't work and now everyone is being paid incorrectly, even now 6 years later.Public Works provides a monthly update on Phoenix. The most recent is from August, which states Although intake varies month over month, the number of transactions received at the Pay Centre has steadily increased since 2021. This increase, along with the high complexity of outstanding transactions that remain, have limited our ability to reduce the overall number of outstanding transactions. Public Service Pay Centre dashboard as of August 31, 2022 - Canada.ca (tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca)
So they admit things are getting worse. Many government unions also negotiated a $2500 payment for each employee due to hardship Phoenix has put them through. Employees received the bonus payment, but Phoenix didn't get fixed. The next round of collective bargaining will have more Phoenix hardship payments I'm sure. Someone I know is owed $30k from Phoenix, and has no way to get it except by writing his Member of Parliament and asking his file to be prioritized which he is about to do. He also owes $20k from being overpaid from 2016, and I think the government is going to have to write that off as uncollectable (Canadian law limits federal collections after six years if certain conditions are met). To conclude, a parody about it made by the Canadian comedy show This Hour has 22 Minutes from six years ago Heritage Minute: Phoenix Payroll System - YouTube
Not discussed is the influence on morale of getting paid for work six months after completing it.