Evidence of meeting #163 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pay.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
No, I don't deny the timeline, but how is it possible after so many years into the NSS, the importance, and we don't even have a timeline?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We have a timeline in the sense—
February 27th, 2019 / 5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
We don't even know when it's going to be started or completed.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We have a timeline in the sense that the delivery of the polar icebreaker will follow the delivery of the second JSS.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
When will the second JSS be delivered then because then I can figure out when when the polar icebreaker—
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The design work for that will start as we finish the OSV.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
So we have no idea. Do you find it acceptable this late that we have no idea?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We have an idea.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Following the delivery of JSS which is in 2024-25.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I want to quote for you. This is from the commander of NORAD—
Conservative
Conservative
NDP
Cheryl Hardcastle NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Thank you very much for having me. I will use my seven minutes.
I'm interested in asking a little bit about our Phoenix pay situation. I'm from the riding of Windsor—Tecumseh. A lot of people are asking about the situation and the light at the end of the tunnel, and the responsiveness of the government, not just in terms of how it's actually, literally responding, but also in terms of how nimble it is. This situation has proven that the government isn't in this situation.
I want to ask about two things in terms of the responsiveness. Maybe you can give us a clearer picture of that nimbleness.
Can one of you or maybe a few of you elaborate a little bit on the pay pods method? My understanding is that it was supposed to help mitigate the stress and the crisis situations for, obviously, people who live paycheque to paycheque. Maybe just elaborate on how that is working, and any lessons we've learned from it that we can use to strengthen performance in the future.
Associate Deputy Minister, Human Resources-to-Pay Stabilization, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Certainly. As the minister mentioned, we have seen progress with the pod model since it was launched with a pilot in December 2017, in three departments. We've been working since then with the staff at the pay centre in Miramichi and in our regional offices to expand the model as quickly as we can, with the appropriate level of staff and support to provide the leadership, the training and the coaching to allow the transition to a pod.
Essentially, Mr. Chair, a pod is a group of about 25 compensation staff, which include experienced compensation advisers, support staff who literally are taking both theoretical training and training on the job. They start off with straightforward transactions in the pod and then grow their knowledge base over time, supplemented with training. The pod is also equipped with a team lead, a data analytics specialist to help direct workload to the right people, to make sure that what comes in can be dealt with within the right time frame, the current pay period, so nothing new becomes old.
What happens with the pod, with this organizational structure, is that linkages are made back to the departments that they are serving, so direct connections with HR and with the finance groups, to allow information to flow back and forth. It allows departments to identify which priority transactions they would like the pod to work on to respond to their own particular circumstances. Some departments choose to deal with the oldest cases. Some departments choose to deal with the most complex cases, regardless of age, but that's based on their own feedback and their interaction with their staff. We work with them to grow those relationships.
At this point we are into the third wave of pod rollout this week and next. We'll now be at about 70% of pay centre staff being served by a pod, and that number will reach 100% by the end of May. What we've seen in terms of results is that, on average, even with the staggered rollout, the pods have reduced the backlog or the queue for their departments by almost 30%, whereas generally the reduction has been 25% across the entire network over the last 12 months. We are seeing the benefits of this.
Once all departments are on the pod, we will continue to see benefits as the service ratio is quite a bit smaller than is a transaction-based ratio. Fewer people can serve more people because of the structure and the knowledge sharing that happens, the skills development that happens. At the same time, we see that departments are understanding more what they can do within their own HR or finance departments to streamline processes to improve the flow of information back and forth. Essentially, the pod is dealing with an individual's file so that, as they clean things up, once a person is made whole and nothing new becomes old, they stay whole and their files remain clean.
NDP
Cheryl Hardcastle NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Okay. Really quickly, then, I'm just asking, if anybody has asked about the integrity regime. I just came in and—
NDP
Cheryl Hardcastle NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
There certainly isn't. There's never enough time to champion working-class people who are working hard in our government as well.
I guess what I'd like to ask really quickly is: Is there still effort going into fixing Phoenix?
