Evidence of meeting #24 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 paid.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Back to the testing, Mr. Liddy, I realize that you can't recall every single one tested, but with the 16,000 test cases, can I assume that the major issues we're facing now did not come up during that testing period?
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
That's correct, they did not.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
To me, the short-term pay grade changes, the fill-in, etc., are a huge part of day-to-day goings on in government. Did we just miss those, in testing something so common?
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
No.
I'll give you an example. Today, if you're in an acting position, it's automatic. So that system works within Phoenix. We had about 42,000 actings that weren't part of the rollout, but sort of back actings from before Phoenix. So we didn't have a system, except manually, to enter those in, and that became part of the workload. So the acting thing works. We simply didn't have an ability to take retroactive actings and do them in an automated fashion.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
We heard earlier that there was a backlog of 20,000, and then 20,000 added on. I may have misheard it, but I wrote down in my notes, “We didn't know there was backlog of 20,000.” How could we not have known there was such a huge backlog? I'm sure there's not just one person hiding it in a closet somewhere to surprise us. I mean, that's a huge amount. Surely someone somewhere would have said, “Hey, we have to enter these things.”
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
When we talk to the heads of HR—and they know about the backlog, which they have been told about and are acting on—each individual manager may have appointed someone for three days to be an acting AS-2 to AS-3 and may not have put that in the system. It's the same with things like leave without pay. Somebody may have taken leave without pay, but that wasn't entered into the system. So even the heads of HR don't know each individual manager's decision and when they've taken a decision. And when you add that up across—
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
If you look at 2014, we would probably have the same 20,000 backlog. I'm sure it's not just an overnight thing.
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Maybe.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I assume this has been going on forever. How could we not have known this existed, because it wasn't something that happened overnight.
July 28th, 2016 / 4:10 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The difference here is that leading up to the Phoenix implementation, as we've heard, departments were getting ready, I'll say cleaning up and getting the information out, and that happened in a fairly short time. It wasn't an ongoing normal process. It just came in at the end.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
No, no. When we consolidated into the pay centre, we asked departments to clean up the backlog, so that when the compensation function moved from the departments to Miramichi, even before Phoenix, they didn't inherit a large backlog. Then the same thing happened when we were going to wave 1 and wave 2 in Phoenix: we asked departments to clear out the backlog.
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I know departments put extraordinary efforts into doing it—
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
—but it wasn't completely cleared. That's right.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. It sounds as though that snowballed into a lot of other issues.
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Yes, and then you take new compensation advisers....
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Looking back with common sense, to follow up we would have asked whether departments had cleared everything. Did we miss that?
4:10 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Well, we—
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Yes.
You mentioned earlier working with PSAC and the other union partners. Are you still continuing work with them? I'm reading Twitter feeds. I realize it's Twitter, but there are still comments coming saying “no, that's not correct; that's not correct”.
What mechanism do we have to keep in very close contact? I realize there's a web page and that people can call in, but they're often the very first point of contact for a lot of our workers in the government. How are we communicating with them to make sure that we're not going down this path when we've overlooked something, as we overlooked the backlog?
4:10 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
There are several ways. As I think I said, when I first joined I met with the five heads of unions, and we decided that two of the representatives would meet with me on a regular basis. We did that with two of the union representatives for about four or five weeks. More recently, there have been discussions with the—
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Yes, it was in April. My first meeting with the five heads of unions was on April 25, I believe.
At that point, what I was looking for was to get the information they were hearing so that we could feed it into the system. That's why we were ready to establish some lines of communication, and actually a special email address, so that they could give us some of the information they were getting.
That worked well at the beginning, but at one point the backlog situation outstripping our capacity was such that even that wasn't a sufficient channel, and that's when we had to create the web form.
My colleague at Treasury Board is obviously very much involved, so between the two of us there are discussions. We are committed to meeting again and have just recently talked to the PSAC members' president to have a kind of ongoing committee so that we can share some of the ongoing changes and things that we're doing.
They've been very good with the compensation advisers, as you know. They've been helping; they have it on their website. So that conversation is happening. It's extremely important.
I'll be honest with you: we have been spending 18-hour days on this; we're running and are hoping we can get to a state in which we can get back to somewhat more formal discussions on this.
4:15 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I would also add that the union engagement started as soon as the consolidation decision was made, and the union was part of discussions—Rosanna has all the details—on a regular basis as we moved through the project.