{"id":9726,"date":"2025-06-24T03:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T03:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9726\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T03:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T03:42:08","slug":"fixing-phoenix-payroll-problems-cost-ottawa-5-1-billion-says-federal-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9726\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing Phoenix payroll problems cost Ottawa $5.1-billion, says federal official"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Benay, associate deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, says the alternative to running the Phoenix system at the same time as its replacement, Dayforce, would have been worse.Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

A top federal official said fixing the payroll problems caused by Phoenix cost taxpayers more than $5-billion \u2013 and they\u2019ll keep paying extra to run two public service payroll platforms at once as Ottawa weans itself off the problem-plagued system.<\/p>\n

Alex Benay, associate deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, said the alternative to running the Phoenix system in tandem with its replacement, Dayforce, would have been worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unfortunate situation is there\u2019s no easy path,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the one that\u2019s going to impact employees the least.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other option, he said, would have been a more risky \u201cbig bang\u201d deployment that would have switched roughly 350,000 public servants from the old system to the new Dayforce system all at once.<\/p>\n

Will artificial intelligence really fix Ottawa\u2019s troubled Phoenix pay?<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened when the federal government introduced Phoenix, which led to nearly a decade of public service payroll errors and major lawsuits.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy commitment when I started this role was that I would not support that, for all the obvious reasons of where we are today, nine years later,\u201d Benay said.<\/p>\n

He added that the \u201cdeputy minister community\u201d and ministers decided they \u201cdo not want to do another big bang.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benay said taxpayers likely spent about $5.1-billion to process the backlog of Phoenix errors that caused some public servants to be paid incorrectly \u2013 or sometimes not paid at all.<\/p>\n

On June 11, Ottawa announced it had awarded a ten-year contract to Dayforce worth $350.6-million which includes a possible extension to 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not another Phoenix. The work is being done at small scale and transparently,\u201d Benay said. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that this is a smarter, more human-centred transformation that\u2019ll be built to last.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parallel testing of the new payroll system will start next year and the first two departments to adopt the new system will be Shared Services Canada and Public Services Procurement Canada.<\/p>\n

The initial amount spent to create Phoenix was $309-million, according to departmental spokesperson Jullian Paquin.<\/p>\n

Phoenix\u2019s origins date back to 2009. It was originally designed to decrease the cost of processing the federal government\u2019s massive payroll.<\/p>\n

But the project failed on launch after being rolled out with no project oversight, according to a federal audit. The original price tag provided by IBM to implement Phoenix in 2012 was $274-million.<\/p>\n

With files from Catherine Morrison<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Alex Benay, associate deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, says the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2148,2138,671,104,2132,692,2147,2131,2143,2144,2140,2133,2130,79,407,746,2142,2137,2159,2134,2135,454,2139,1165,728,2149,108,2154,2155,50,2157,2152,2156,2150,2153,2136,85,2146,80,2145,2151,1458,158,1164,2141,1154,107,2158],"class_list":{"0":"post-9726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-news","38":"tag-northwest-territories","39":"tag-nova-scotia","40":"tag-nunavut","41":"tag-ontario","42":"tag-pei","43":"tag-photos","44":"tag-political-news","45":"tag-political-opinion","46":"tag-politics","47":"tag-politics-news","48":"tag-quebec","49":"tag-sports-news","50":"tag-technology","51":"tag-travel","52":"tag-trudeau","53":"tag-us-news","54":"tag-world-news","55":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}