So the tax collector also screws over their own employees and not just taxpayers? Welcome to the club, I guess.
St. John's woman loses home after Phoenix pay fiasco
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Re: St. John's woman loses home after Phoenix pay fiasco
#22I read one expert describe the Phoenix pay system as "garbage in, garbage out". The government signed hundreds of separate collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, each with their own different rules for pay, overtime, etc, making the system highly complex. Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs. Arguably it's partially a failure on the government's part not to negotia…
The Phoenix pay system is something crafted by the previous government (under Harper) with the idea of creating a "Shared Government Services" department so that each department would not have its own pay system, its own email, etc. The only redundant systems permitted were those related to national security (and AIUI, that was grudgingly given).
It’s completely unsurprising that a top-down mandating of shared services requiring a rewrite / reimplementation of pretty much everything that government departments use would go bad very quickly and have lingering effects. It’s also understandable that it was impossible to reverse the course once started, because institutional knowledge was lost (people who knew how the old systems worked retired out or quit, etc.). This, of course, has led to throwing more money at a money pit.
Fortunately, it looks like they’ve finally filled it—but that doesn’t do anything for the thousands of people who were broken by this boondoggle.
Re: St. John's woman loses home after Phoenix pay fiasco
#23Some other context on the system:
Anger rising over failed Phoenix Pay system - https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1173674563714 (4 years ago)
Former CRA auditor says even he ‘cannot fathom’ way out of Phoenix mess - https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2039588419529
Public servants express 'zero faith' in Phoenix damages claims process after long waits - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/public-servant-phoenix...
(topic) Phoenix Falling - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/topic/Tag/Phoenix%20Falling
Phoenix 'nightmare' still haunting public servants, more than 6 years on https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-system-iss...
Ottawa spent $560-million on damages over the Phoenix pay system, records show https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-paid...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada - Phoenix Pay category - https://pipsc.ca/news-issues/phoenix-pay-system (lots of linked articles)
Re: St. John's woman loses home after Phoenix pay fiasco
#24It's been 5 years since she first got $0 paychecks and this still hasn't been resolved? I'm confused why the union or whoever can't sue the government on their behalf. Or some lawyer takes on a bunch of their cases if it's 200k people affected.
The union can file a grievance with the government, but it can takes years to go through all the processes. She can't sue on her own.
Re: St. John's woman loses home after Phoenix pay fiasco
#25Giant systems of immense complexity that nobody can understand, what could go wrong? And even if they’re a complete failure, they’ll never admit to it
And the really frustrating thing is - there are people (like me and others on here right now) who'd be perfectly happy to sit and unravel and fix this monstrosity, but software development "how long is that going to take? And you'd better say a day" methodology prohibits any sort of complex/deep work.
Why would they choose you, when the contracted company can bill $300/hr per developer for 'change requests' to fix the system. They don't want to fix it, they want to fix each individual problem as it comes up.