Bureaucracy and technology don’t do well together in Canada. The federal government’s multibillion-dollar Phoenix payroll system fiasco is perhaps the most egregious example, but it is not alone.
The saga’s latest chapter was written by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO). It is a disturbing read, especially for taxpayers who have watched hay bales of their hard-earned dollars incinerated as a result of the Phoenix implementation and who will be forced to watch many more burned for years to come.
Consider, for example, that the PBO estimates procurement, testing and training costs to find and implement another new payroll system for federal public servants will run to $57 million. Add that to the estimated $2.6 billion in costs to “stabilize Phoenix” and correct pay file data.
This is all collateral damage repair for a project that began a decade ago and will continue for at least another four years – the best guess on the earliest time a replacement system will be operating.
The financial magnitude of the IT incompetence here is staggering.
A tentative agreement reached recently between federal public service unions and employer representatives provides further illustration. It includes a lengthy inventory of compensation for the 300,000 Phoenix-afflicted public servants. There is not enough space here to list that compensation; suffice it to say that it will add significantly to Canadian taxpayers’ Phoenix bill.
At the heart of the Phoenix failure, aside from the ineptitude of the bureaucrats who made its procurement decisions, is the complexity of the federal public service pay system. It includes, for example, approximately 80,000 pay rules and more than 200 different paid allowances.
Such bureaucratic lunacy is typical of a system that runs on other people’s money.
It is also why IT disasters like Phoenix and, closer to home, MyEducation BC, happen.
It needs to persuade Canadian voters to elect politicians who will ensure that those disasters don’t keep on happening.
