A brand new report exhibits that the federal government has cleared simply 14 per cent of the online backlog of points.
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The federal authorities is inching in direction of its purpose of changing the damaged Phoenix pay system, however nonetheless hasn’t come near clearing its large backlog of transactions.
The federal government has been working in direction of changing the plagued fee system, which was first launched in 2016, however one of many first hurdles in doing so might be to kind out a protracted record of pay points. A brand new quarterly progress report, launched Wednesday, confirmed that the federal government has resolved simply 14 per cent of the online backlog that has constructed up.
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As of Aug. 28, the full backlog of transactions was at 408,000, in comparison with 400,000 in July and 416,000 in June.
“That is an space the place there’s room for enchancment,” mentioned Alex Benay, affiliate deputy minister for Public Companies and Procurement Canada, throughout a press convention Wednesday. “The web backlog has to go down additional.”
Benay mentioned that the federal government’s precedence is to clear almost 19,000 backlog instances that it has recognized as having an enormous monetary impression on workers. He added that 5,000 of those instances have been cleared in the previous couple of months.
Benay mentioned the federal government doesn’t need any backlog older than a yr being transferred into a brand new system, which means there are greater than 200,000 instances that can should be cleared earlier than that may occur. Of the unresolved points on the finish of August, 51 per cent (209,000) had been greater than a yr previous.
Over the previous three months, Benay mentioned that whereas the federal government had made vital progress, the amount of latest instances stays excessive.
“It makes it more durable to cut back the backlog and, as we clear instances, it implies that new backlog instances can merely emerge,” Benay mentioned.
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Within the report, the federal government mentioned it had been testing Dayforce, the seemingly candidate to exchange Phoenix, by providing “person consciousness classes” to departments.
Issues with Phoenix started to happen virtually instantly after its implementation and proceed eight years later, resulting in errors on workers’ paycheques and delays in fee. The federal government has labored to deal with these points by hiring greater than 1,100 compensation brokers since September 2022 and using artificial intelligence.
Whereas Phoenix was meant to avoid wasting the federal government $70 million by consolidating pay methods throughout departments, it has since value greater than $3.5 billion.
Benay mentioned estimates on how way more the federal government spend on the system “might be decided this yr.” He mentioned he expects the present and new methods to run in parallel for a number of years, noting that the federal government wants to determine how a lot that can value.
Amid the continuing points with Phoenix, the federal government has spent greater than $150 million since 2018 wanting into a brand new platform to exchange it. A February 2024 report with outcomes of preliminary testing discovered that Dayforce was a “viable choice” for the following HR and pay system.
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The federal government expects to launch an estimate of when and the way Dayforce may very well be rolled out by the top of the fiscal yr and doesn’t anticipate to start out launching a brand new system till March 2026.
Earlier than that may occur, the federal government is seeking to standardize its roughly 30 totally different human sources methods that feed into Phoenix.
Benay mentioned the federal government is working to remove the backlog of transactions at Shared Companies Canada by March 2025 because it’s the primary division that might be fed into Dayforce as a trial. Benay added that different departments might be built-in slowly.
“It’s value us rather a lot to get it fallacious final time,” Benay mentioned.
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