Phénix system: 408,000 transactions awaiting processing | Phoenix: a pay system that is in trouble

The federal government does not know when it will be able to eliminate all of the 408,000 transactions awaiting processing in the Phoenix pay system.

The government wants to eliminate 112,000 by the end of the financial year. This includes processing the 19,000 pending transactions deemed to be the most problematic and impactful for public servants.

Shared Services Canada employees will be the first whose files will be transferred to the new payeala system Dayforce. The government therefore wants to eliminate the 12,000 transactions pending for employees of this department by the end of the financial year.

Artificial intelligence in support

To help resolve payroll issues and improve our operations, we have launched various payroll initiatives. RH and payroll. One of them involves an artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant that is intended to support compensation advisors and significantly reduce processing timeswe can read in a press release from Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC).

The government emphasizes that the first tests with artificial intelligence are conclusive and that it wishes to clean a growing number of erroneous data with this technology.

We did almost 20,000 cases in one evening. So that’s something that a human won’t necessarily be able to do. There, we need to ensure if the calculation that was made is the correct calculation.confides the deputy deputy minister of SPACAlex Benay.

However, he specifies that it is up to civil servants to manage payments so as not to let artificial intelligence do all the work. There will be humans who will be part of the decision-making process. There will be de facto tools. So, it’s a bit of a transition that we’re making, but we’re trying to do it graduallyadds Mr. Benay.

SPAC claims to have started the study of possible solutions for a new modern case management and customer relations tool which will allow more efficient management of pay movements.

Eliminate pending transactions before Dayforce

The federal government wants to eliminate all transactions pending for more than a year before transferring the files of all federal civil servants to the new Dayforce pay system. This represents approximately 200,000 transactions.

To avoid past mistakes and ensure a harmonious transition between the two pay systems, the government anticipates that they will have to coexist for a period of approximately five years.

We are not going to transfer an erroneous file or data into the new system. I think we’ve seen the impact it’s had historically when we do it. […] We are working on policies and systematic approaches across all ministries to ensure that this does not happen again.souligne Alex Benay.

The official launch of Dayforce is not planned before 2026.

Since 2016, the federal government has spent several billion dollars on the Phoenix pay system.

A government obligation

In response to this update, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) reiterated that the fact of paying civil servants correctly is not a choicebut rather a obligation of government and its main responsibility.

New tools to help compensation advisors deal with pay issues are a good start, but after eight years, it’s too little, too late. Public servants and unions expect real progress to resolve Phoenix pay problems and the enormous backlog of more than 407,000 pay problemsindicates the national president of theAFPC, Sharon DeSousa, in a written statement.

For her, it is necessary to hire and train compensation advisors and then process the new Phoenix issues arising every day and eliminate the huge backlog of pay issues.

With information from Estelle Côté-Sroka