I am pleased to report that our initiative to recruit and train CSs to work on Phoenix is making good progress. I made a strong case for building the government’s in-house capacity at my recent meeting with the Cabinet Committee of Ministers tasked with fixing the beleaguered Phoenix pay system.
So much of what went wrong with Phoenix stems from the former government’s wrongheaded decision to outsource the technical work of testing and implementing the project to a large multinational IT company. Now we are left not only with a faulty system but with integration and end-to-end issues that are exacerbating the problems.
Bringing in more public servants and training them sends not only a message that we are turning a corner on an ideological approach to IT modernization but also initiating an approach that makes economic sense. The government already employs over 13,000 CSs, making it one of the largest IT employers in the country. Why would the Canadian government not use their own in-house resources?
Stay tuned for a joint call out from Public Services and Procurement Canada for CSs to train and work on Phoenix – an exciting opportunity to showcase public service talent, get much needed access to training and help get our colleagues paid on time and correctly.
Chalk this one up in the victory column for public servants and for common sense!
Better Together!
Debi Daviau
President