For Immediate Release
Forget Phoenix. Let’s build a new federal pay system that works, says PIPSC President Debi Daviau
Ottawa, November 14, 2017 – The Phoenix pay system needs to be replaced with a new system that works built by the government's own IT professionals, says the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which represents over 50,000 federal government employees.
"After nearly two years of problems with IBM's Phoenix pay system, our members have lost confidence in the promise of fixing Phoenix," said PIPSC President Debi Daviau. "Despite all efforts to fix Phoenix, the number of open cases of pay problems has grown to 330,000 as of October 2017 – with no end in sight. Enough is enough."
In its proposal, PIPSC calls for parallel processes to deal with the immediate pay crisis plaguing public servants and the long-term needs of the government.
To address immediate needs, PIPSC is calling on the government to hire additional staff to help employees impacted by the Phoenix pay system. For a faster, longer-term solution, PIPSC is calling on the government to task its own IT professionals with building a new pay system based on the latest version of PeopleSoft, the widely used human resources management system, and adapting it to the complex needs of the Government of Canada pay environment.
"The government needs to stop throwing good money after bad and start investing in a system that works," added Daviau. "As it happens, we already have the expertise and the people within the federal public service capable of designing and building it. They just need the opportunity to do so. The longer the current government delays investing in a properly designed pay system, the longer it will continue to waste tens of millions of public dollars on private contracts to patch a faulty system that was broken from the start. And the longer federal employees will be made to suffer for a bad system."
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For further information:
Johanne Fillion, jfillion@pipsc.ca, 613-228-6310, poste 4953 or 613-883-4900 (cell.)