Integrated strategy for human resources and pay
Progress update session, July 2024
Since the launch of the Phoenix Pay System in 2016, work to stabilize Pay Operations has been ongoing. Despite significant efforts by the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer (OCHRO) at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) and Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), public servants continue to feel the impacts of its roll out eight years later. The session informed public servants of the continued work being done to stabilize operations and the current status of the transformation project to transition to a single modern human resources and pay solution. A commitment has been made to move forward transparently on this file through regular updates, a revitalized webpage and user engagement. This will be the first of a series of quarterly updates that will be organized in the coming year.
Transcript of the video Progress update session, July 2024
Start of video
(Text on screen: Public Services and Procurement Canada)
[Mitos San Diego talking at podium.]
Welcome to the first progress update for Human Resources (HR) and Pay for the Government of Canada.
My name is Mitos San Diego, I am the Senior Director of the Enterprise Project Coordination Office within the HMC portfolio. I am here today because I fundamentally believe in proactively sharing what we are doing within the portfolio, and restoring confidence in an open and transparent way.
I would like to acknowledge that since I am in Ottawa, I am on the traditional unceded territory of the Anishinaabe and Algonquin Nations.
As we all work in different places, please take the take a moment to reflect on the traditional indigenous territory in your area.
Today's session will provide you with an update on HR and Pay and what to expect in the next year.
With us today is Chris Fox, Deputy Clerk of Privy Council and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet. Francis Trudel, Associate Chief Human Resources Officer at the Treasury Board Secretariat. And Alex Benay, Associate Deputy Minister of Public Service and Procurement Enterprise Pay Coordination. I will now turn it over to the Deputy Clerk.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
Thank you very much, and thank you Alex and Francis, and most importantly, thank you to our participants who have joined us today.
The objectives today are simple, it's to have a conversation with all of you on our efforts on moving forward with the pay system for the government. It's to signal a different approach around transparency and openness, around decisions by senior leaders, is to recognize the challenges and the impact that the pay system has had on many public servants. And it's about rebuilding that confidence. And finally, it's about getting your feedback on how we can collaborate moving forward to rebuild our pay system.
Since joining Privy Council Office (PCO) in January of 2024, I have focused a lot of my time and attention on the question of values and ethics in the public service. It's a conversation that the Clerk of the Privy Council, John Hannaford has had with many of you, and I've been privy to a lot of dialogue around what is our role as public servants in the broader democratic system.
But one of the key points that gets raised in this conversation is around respect for people, and the link to the pay system, because it's not just about serving Canadians and our jobs and the external environment, but it's also about who we are and how we treat each other within the public service.
And I think we all have a responsibility to create positive safe spaces for people. In my role at PCO, I'm also coordinating a number of big files, including pay, working very closely with Alex and Francis, my colleagues and in departments as well as the Treasury Board. And I think part of the reflection is about how do we learn from the past, how do we learn from where we were to be better into the future and avoid some of the potential mistakes that we have made?
And I think it is important, as we have this conversation, that it's not just systems and processes, it's people. It's individuals who work for us, and how we make decisions in a transparent way, how we communicate the obstacles that we will undoubtedly face over the next few weeks and years, is really important to have these regular updates. And I think I would say that today is kind of the foundation, it's the beginning of a conversation, but we want to build on today because we do want more interaction.
We want to have a conversation with public servants, we want to be able to get your comments, answer your questions. And so how we do this going forward is actually being shaped. But today is about giving you a bit of an update on where we're at. And so Francis and Alex will talk about a bit of a situational update on human resources, on where we're going with the pay system, where we are today in the operations of the backlog, and then how we will make some changes around governance and transparency. So with that, I will now turn to Francis and then Alex for a bit of intro remarks, and then we'll dive into some questions.
[Francis Trudel talking in an armchair.]
Great, thank you very much Chris, really genuinely a pleasure to be here and take part in an initiative like this one that aims at really openness and transparency on and one of the big project in the public service that really literally impact, impact everyone. So, Francis Trudel, I’m the Chief the Associate Chief Human Resources Officer. That means that basically, together with Jackie Bogdan is the Chief Human Resources Officer for the Public Service. We are together responsible of the policy suite for human resources, the establishing of collective agreements where the condition of employment through the collective bargaining process, and the overall oversight of the of the regime of human resources. Often we describe ourselves as the employer. It's probably an all encompassing description. One of the biggest initiatives that we carry, at Treasury Board in OCHRO is obviously the HR to Pay file, we do this jointly with our friend at PSPC. Ergo, the importance of this file and therefore the importance to like increase the communication and then transparency around it.
We have a specific role, a complementary role with Alex and his team, we work on the simplification and the standardization agenda which are kind of big words to say that we look at practices and behaviours and that systems to try to minimize the impact on the pay downstream for people.
Today's lessons learned opportunity and a little bit of a little bit of an update, this file have been worked on for a long time. I've been personally involved in it for a very long time, and I maybe a reassuring words in the progress that I have seen that the proximity that has grown, over the last year, year and a half between the information technology (IT) solution, and the HR requirements is really getting quite significant in its role in our progress. So, I'll leave it to that for you Alex.
[Alex Benay talking in an armchair.]
Merci, thank you Francis, sorry we just had the first session, I almost answered in French. So, thank you Francis, I'll start off by saying I acknowledge that the last few years haven’t been easy for many of you on the call. And I know there's been herculean efforts from the people at the pay center to get pay out the door, so it's not an easy situation on any side of this equation.
And, that you've continued to serve valiantly despite these issues. So thank you, thank you for all the hard work. And thank you for, those of you that have been more than patient with us because I think it's our responsibility to ensure that public servants receive accurate and timely pay, for not just us on stage, but managers of HR, managers of people. So, we also await the public servants to do better, and to be transparent about where we're going, our successes, because there have been some in the last few years, but also some of the failures that have happened and failures that will inevitably happen. So, we owe you that transparency. And as the Deputy Clerk mentioned, today is the first step, it's the first step towards that. So, as part of the work that we're doing, we've committed to transparency by design.
So, this means that this is the first of regular updates that you will receive, on where we are with HR and Pay. I think we've talked about pay in the past, but you cannot disassociate HR and Pay, and so moving forward, expect these meetings quarterly. We'll be launching a new website where we'll be releasing information like records of decisions, governance decisions, meeting minutes, timelines, so that people can know where we are on the timeline and some of our commitments.
So, this is again, as mentioned, just the beginning. So, over the last year we've done a deep dive on every single internal and external report related to all things Phoenix. And we've reviewed all the studies and there are some pretty significant underlying conditions for the reasons where we are, where we are today. So, for example, HR and Pay and the way we run it, which are as two separate systems, we're one are the only ones that do this in the world according to Goss Gilroy.
The current system that we currently have for pay is just not fit for purpose. It doesn't necessarily work for the compensation advisers. There's a lot of effort that's undertaken by the teams in Miramichi across Canada in order to just get pay out the door or do a backlog case. Also, we don't manage data centrally, which means that every department has a data store. That means that we have to transfer your files every time you transfer from one department to the next.
And since 2017, we've been told that we needed to look at a central data management approach. So we will talk about that today. So after, looking at all of those strategies, we're going to talk today about operations, the current system, and transformation, what we're going to be doing in order to get out of the situation that we're in once and for all.
You're going to hear us speak today about things like Unified Actions for Pay, which is in the current system for operations. We're going to talk about how we're looking to launch artificial intelligence for our backlog, and also how we can actually stabilize the current system. So for example, we have 30 HR systems that feed one pay system. So, the pay system is actually a clean-up system, it's not just something that gets the pay out the door. So, you'll hear about those things today, we'll get into more details later on. And we're also going to hear about how we're preparing for transformation.
Our Next Gen has been proven viable and how we plan on building it this year. So, next last year, Next Gen issued a final findings report, which we deemed was viable. So, it's a viable solution for us. But making something viable doesn't mean that it's ready to roll out. So, there's a lot of work that we'll talk about over the course of this session. So, what we're going to be doing this year is to make sure that it's feasible to roll it out, so can we build it?
Can we put fingers to keyboards and bring it to your lobbies so that you get to touch it and experience it as well, so that we're not designing what we did last time in a vacuum and putting it out for people to use. Once it's complete, we want you to be part of the process. So, this year is all about building on the future HR and pay solution, moving to a central data management approach, standardizing some of the HR work that Francis is going to talk about, Artificial intelligence (AI). So, there's a lot of things going on, but we'll get into that later on, through the questions that the Deputy Clerk is about to ask.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
There you go, thank you both. I think that kind of information provides a bit of the foundation for this conversation. And I think it's clear that we have a responsibility to work together to fix the pay system. And over the last few weeks and month in our conversations, I've learned to better appreciate the complexities around our HR and Pay systems. And Francis, I wondered if you could elaborate a little bit on kind of why is it that we have this complicated system, and why is it important for us to reflect on simplification as we make the shift to a new system?
[Francis Trudel talking in an armchair.]
Yeah, I think that's a great place to start because not everybody is exposed to the complexity of our systems, in our in our regime or the enterprise we're working in, and therefore don't always appreciate the impact it actually has downstream to the pay system.
So, I talked about complementary earlier. Alex is responsible for the machine, that actually pay people in addition to the project of bringing us to a new system, we are responsible for establishing the condition of employment, which in itself brings some complexity to it. But I think that the starting point where the complexity is first anchored, we have to just accept the size and the complexity of the enterprise we're working in. I mean, we often forget that the public service is the biggest enterprise in the country. It is the most decentralized organization in our country, in the most diversified organization in our country.
Right there and then you can almost stop and say it will remain complex. But it could be a bit simpler. I think the numbers speaks as well. strongly. I mean, if you just look at the core of the public service, we have right now 80 departments that comprise a core public service. That means about 275,000 people that work in it. These individuals are represented by 17 different unions, which translate into 28 collective agreements. And if we were to include the separate agencies in this, you're actually talking 360,000 people in 58 collective agreements.
If that wasn't enough, 72 classification groups to work with it all translate at the end of the at the end of the continuum to Alex having to manage with his team about 80,000 payrolls. So, that's where the complexity is anchored. And I mean, just add cultural things, and some of it is actually part of the good aspect of where we work, which is an organization that allows a lot of mobility. It's part of our culture, mobility within our departments, changing jobs, being assigned to, upward movements, moving horizontally, changing departments. All of this is just adding an added, not only to the numbers, but to the complexity of the of the of the pay transaction at the end of the process. So, this is the work. The work is trying to get simpler where we can, that's my job. And for Alex and his team to find a solution that accepts and respects some inherent complexity that will remain.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
Well, I think I think you've laid out quite well just the complexity of it, but also the benefit of you know having that mobility, having the ability to recruit people to go work in the space agency or foreign affairs, like it's actually an asset as a public service.
So, we need to have a system that can actually respond to that, and not become a hindrance on joining the public service. And so, the complexities are real. So, Alex, can you speak a little bit about the work that's happening now to help us from an operational standpoint, kind of the current challenges that we're facing?
[Alex Benay talking in an armchair.]
Yeah, I think it's important to note that transformation is not going to happen overnight. We're talking about 3 to 5, 6 years worth of work to get to an end state. So, we will be with the current system for quite a while. So, in order to make sure that we're not just focused on the future. Currently, some of the things we're looking at, the pay center last year process 13.1 million pay transactions.
So a lot of those 1.6 million to be exact, were due to cause manual intake and by manual intake, it could be because we didn't receive the information on time from a department. The information wasn't complete. So, there's a number of reasons that require us to have manual intervention. So, 1.6 million of those were manually required us to have manual intervention.
So, we literally have to tighten up things that are sent to the pay center through process. So, one of the things that we've been working on with heads of HR and deputies around town over the last few months is something called Unified Actions for Pay.
There's seven measures that we're asking deputy ministers to put in place in their department, and an example of that would be stop hiring people outside of the day after pay. In large multinationals or large national corporations, you usually bring people on the day after pay. and that's to not have pay issues. So, we don't do that. We kind of bring in people all the time. So, that's an example.
Another one that we'll want to do with as part of this program will be to turn back on email notifications. So, when a manager doesn't have it doesn't perform a transaction on time, we'll be able to send that manager an email. And if that manager doesn't respond, we'll be escalating until it hits the deputy's desk. So again, it'll be those kinds of measures we need to put in place currently in our current system.
We're also looking at you heard me mentioned, we have 30 current HR systems. We have a plan to consolidate that down like at least half over the next few years. So, we need to standardize, for example, it's dates if you're acting is month, year and day and Department A over here. But it’s year, month, or year, day, and month over there. And we're getting acting dates that are completely different.
The pay center has to clean that up, so by standardizing the types of HR systems that we have over the next few years. It'll standardize the input, which means we'll actually be able to focus on things like the backlog. The last thing I'd say is we're also going to be introducing actually next month, the code name for this is Buffy, Buffy the Backlog Slayer.
Actually, is what the team is calling it, but we will want to be turning on artificial intelligence in our backlog operations and in our pay operations, because machines calculate as well as if not better than humans. So, we need to, we need to give the team the right, the right tools to do the work. So those are all things we're doing currently in our current operations.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
Excellent, so it sounds like we're sort of tackling technical challenges, policy challenges, cultural challenges. So, it's not just kind of a Phoenix pay system issue. It's kind of everybody has a responsibility. And a large part of what I'm hearing from both you and Francis is try to limit the manual interventions that are required to make the system work, and have an efficient pay system.
So Alex, you talked about sort of current operations, but there is obviously a lot of curiosity around transformation and where we're going. So, could you spend a bit of time talking to us about that?
[Alex Benay talking in an armchair.]
Yeah absolutely. So, I'll reiterate it because we need to, transformation is not going to happen overnight, and there is no there's no magic silver bullet for the situation that we're in. So, it took us eight years to get into it, it will take us years to get out of it. So, with that note on out clearly. A few things that we're doing though, this year we're building Dayforce, Dayforce was the tool that we selected through competitive process. By the end of Q1 of next fiscal year.
So, literally a year from now, we will have an HR and Pay system configured for the Government of Canada ready to test. So, the team is all hands on deck this year on making sure that we work with OCHRO, that we work with departments we're going to be bringing the solutions to your lobbies, to virtual events across Canada, to make sure that as many users can touch and interact with this new HR and Pay system so that you get a vote so to speak, into the direction that we take, it needs to work for you. So, we'll be doing that. We'll also be looking, there's a request for information out on the street now for a central data management approach.
The fact that we still transfer files around, frankly, like we're in the 1970s, pre-Internet, when an employee changes departments, we need to end that. There needs to be a place where the information is located for employees, so that transfers are instantaneous. That's not something that takes years, for example. So, that's another piece of transformation that we'll be looking at.
Worth noting that any point along the line in the next fiscal year, if things don't go well, we you know we're going to hit some bumps. And so, we'll make that transparent as part of our transparency by design. If everything goes well, we'll also be looking this year at building out a rollout plan because we will not be doing a big bang approach. I think we all saw, and I have all lived with the results of big bang in the past in this program.
So, we will be looking at a department-by-department rollout schedule, once this thing has been tested for at least six months in the pay center, running in parallel, looking at data. So, we're going to do all of the things that frankly, weren't done the last time.
[Francis Trudel talking in an armchair.]
If I may just pass just one reassuring word maybe on this is that important for people to understand that there's absolutely no contradiction, between the agenda that Alex just explained as a medium term, and the current effort to solve the current environment. I know, I know that for a fact. Alex, I talk to you often.
[Alex Benay talking in an armchair.]
Too often.
[Francis Trudel talking in an armchair.]
Too often. So, the efforts of, solidifying and getting ourselves in a proper state of readiness before moving to the next, to the next stage requires us to get it right in the current system. You gave all kinds of good example of how things will kind of fall into place when we get to the new system. That will only be true if we just resist our past practice of customizing our system, and that we accept that some behaviours needs to change.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
And I think that's, probably what's top of mind for people who have joined this call, who have had perhaps some challenges with the pay system is, you know there are fears, there's worry, there's likely skepticism around kind of why will this work this time.
So, you've both given some examples around kind of avoiding mistakes of the past. But could you elaborate a little bit on some of that work where we are trying to think about doing things differently in this context?
[Alex Benay talking in an armchair.]
You want me to give it a start. Yeah. Well, I yeah, for sure. So, as I mentioned, there won't be a big bang this time. So, we're going to want to do this very small, so small wins, small failures, and adjustments as we go through.
So, I think that's one way that this is going to be very different than the last time was last time we rolled it out, we had a month, and then we rolled it out again. And they're all big, heavy decisions. We want to do this very small, very nimbly. The other thing that will be different, the level of transparency. So, we will be releasing third-party assessments. We will be releasing timelines with, with where we're how we're doing against those timelines.
We'll be releasing records of decisions of committees. We're going to be making all those documents available, by design, initially quarterly, and we'll see if we can release it more frequently as we go through the process. So, that's another area that'll be very different. Frankly, the AI algorithms that we've built for the backlog and the pay center will be made public. I think that's I think that's the Government of Canada first.
So, not that most of us will be able to read it and understand what the algorithm says, because it's a lot of zeros and ones. But that'll be made transparent. And the goal is if we're missing something, we want to know. So, everyone here is as much part of the process as the project team. And the last thing I'd say is exactly that. We want to make this user-centric, not transformation theater. We actually want the input and it'll have to carry a lot of weight in the decision-making, as we go through this process. So, we will be reaching out. You will be getting, as I mentioned, sessions in your lobbies, and we will be getting that user feedback into the cycle, early on and throughout the entire project.
[Francis Trudel talking in an armchair.]
I mean, there's so much things we can expand on the action plan, you talked about a pragmatic example of things we could actually do. We are talking with bargaining agents, and we have signed Memorandums of Understanding's (MOU) that will allow ourselves to discuss and negotiate potentially reopening collective agreements if we have if we can find, you know, mutually agreeable, approaches with that will reduce our, condition of employment, or at least the, the simplifying them.
I would just say on a daily basis what is currently happening and what needs what needs to happen. Alex was there was joking that we're talking multiple times a day. Actually, it's not a joke, it does happen, our mutual our teams are doing the same. And what that actually means is we are challenging each other daily on the requirement that we have. And the solution that Alex need to find on the technology front. And he challenges me back to make sure that the technology cannot accommodate bad practice. So, we need to change our behaviour as well. That is, to me the right dynamic to get to the right outcome.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
So, I can attest to the, very on regular and ongoing conversations, because a gap of two hours almost led to a search party in the context of their back and forth. But I think what I'm hearing is, transformation, transparency in decision making and sort of the need to change the culture of HR practices in the potential pivots that we may need to take.
And I think that the approach that we're discussing today about being a bit more public, about those conversations, being a bit more forthright about posting information online, I think signals a change. And I think, we learned from the experience, and we learned from what people went through. And I think that your engagement in Miramichi and your engagement with unions and employees like all of it, which, will help.
Transparency isn't easy, obviously. And we've got to, as a management team, you know, use forums and such as this to kind of build on kind of how do we approach these hard conversations. And as I mentioned at the beginning, part of this will be to make these sessions more interactive, but a few reflections on sort of transparency in this space. And, Alex, I think there are still some questions around the backlog. How do we tackle the backlog?
Somebody's listening today you talked a little bit about the introduction of AI would be curious to know a little bit about more kind of information on that and any thoughts you would make around sort of the coming weeks when it comes to transparency?
[Alex Benay talking in an armchair.]
Yeah, I guess, maybe starting on the transparency front, and Francis, if you want to jump in on that one and then I'll tackle backlog. But you can expect these sessions to happen quarterly from now on. And that's the intent. So, as the deputy clerk mentioned, we will be finding ways to engage with you on, on questions and answers.
We couldn't figure it out in time for the first session if I'm being honest. So, we're also looking for creative ideas on how we could do this, to broadcast to tens and hundreds of thousands of people and do some form of an AMA or an ask me anything. But, in the meantime, there will be an inbox created for you to be able to send your questions. And we will also be sending a survey shortly on what do you want to hear? Like what do you want from us as far as information, so that we could provide you with that information in a timely manner?
As mentioned, the website is going to start uploading a bunch of information as well. And so that'll be another vehicle for us to engage are also increasing our social media presence. We want to answer your questions online. We want to go to where you reside and when people are asking questions or asking for support and tell you all, have you thought of this? Have you looked at this because it's not always a pay issue?
Often it can be sometimes it's just a question of a transfer that the outgoing department hasn't signed the paperwork. So, we want to work through that with you. So, lots of time over the summer to consult with all of you because you are a part of this process for us.
[Francis Trudel talking in an armchair.]
I mean, all I would add is transparency is the right thing to do, beyond you and I wanting this for a long for a little bit of time, I think, Chris, you can attest that the deputy community is behind the spirit of this. It's not easy. It's going to be complicated.
There's going to be speed bumps, but the right, the right thing to do. and I think what you should expect in the next session, because this is the launch, they will be a little bit more of interactions and making sure we're trying to answer what you need. You need, and the question you have for us will have to create the mechanics for this. And I know you're working on it, Alex.
[Alex Benay talking in an armchair.]
Yeah, absolutely. And so on the backlog, last year we had 120 employees working on the backlog full time. This year, we're ramping it up to 200, and we'll be looking at about 112,000 cases out of the 215,000 cases that are left. the one thing I want to say as a caveat is we don't control intake.
So, if departments have a transaction that's late or data that's incomplete, that means we have to take people off the backlog, and bring them to the front of the queue so that we don't increase more backlog. So, there's some operational juggling there. But right now, we're talking about 110,000 cases this year with this team of 200. We're also looking with the AI to look at acting’s. So, any acting’s, so that's about 40,000 cases total that we have.
So, hopefully we're able to get to those right. We'll see how quickly you know Buffy learns, and how we can adjust her learning patterns. But that's also very promising. So, that's something we'll be looking to do, not just for acting, but other transactions in the backlog as well as we move forward.
So now, this is where we start to talk about transformation and operations coming together. We know that, for example, we'll be looking at certain departments to go first, once we've built this thing. Well, that means we need to clear their backlog first as well.
So, those are some of the things we're also looking to do in some, as far as some of the backlog cases are concerned, is where do we start.
And where do we, you know, because we want to start clean. So, so that'll be something that we start to juggle over the course of the next few months as well.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
Well, I think as we look at sort of Public Service, you know the introduction of artificial intelligence, not just in the services we offer, but within is quite promising in terms of using technology to try to address what has been a significant problem for the Public Service.
So, I think that's encouraging, and as you note, balancing sort of enough resources and attention on current operations, while kind of advancing transformation. And I think that the collective effort across departments is key in doing that successfully. So, Francis question for you, if you had sort of advice to HR professionals, to managers around kind of how do we improve from a departmental standpoint, our efforts into this space? What would be some of the things that you would share?
[Francis Trudel talking in an armchair.]
Yeah, it's a great question. I think the general, the general comment I was make is that we talk often about systems and about processes and about standardization, all big words that that are important at the macro level. But let's not underestimate like the daily action that people actually take in the current environment.
Those matter a lot as well, being things simple as make sure you do your own training on how the Phoenix how the Phoenix systems operate or how the self-service capacity can actually be brought on board. Managers treat demands that are coming to you to transact HR issues on a timely manner. You need to do this in a timely manner. Deputy ministers, please take make it important to implement the action plans that we've given, that we've given you. Pay is downstream. Everything we do upstream have an impact at multiple, at a multiplicity, for Alex at the end.
Particular pitch to managers to engage with human resources officer on the dialog about what you can actually do on a daily basis, on your acting, on your terms, on your casual avoid the multiplicity of transaction, If you could.
[Chris Fox talking in an armchair.]
That's wonderful. So, as we've noted, this is the beginning of a conversation. I do want to thank, all of you for participating, because your input into how we do this, will be very important to us.
Thank you to Alex, Francis and the entire teams have been supporting this effort, and I look forward to future conversations. And with that, I will turn it back to you.
[Mitos San Diego talking at podium]
Thank you, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the Deputy Clerk and Deputies for their participation in today's session. I would also like to extend our sincere thank you to all those who joined us today. As mentioned, we will be holding progress updates on HR to Pay regularly, with the next ones scheduled in the early fall.
There were also be an engagement survey and generic inbox that will be shared in the coming weeks. Thank you and see you then.
(Text on screen: Check us out: facebook.com/PSPC.SPAC, instagram.com/pspc_spac, x.com/pspc_spac, youtube.com/PWGSCanada)
(Public Services and Procurement Canada signature)
(Canada Wordmark)
End of video
Author
Page details
- Date modified: