Government Operations committee  That is an excellent question. In fact, people need several weeks to get used to the system. New employees are not totally autonomous from one day to the next. You are referring to a type of curve that probably looks a little like a hockey stick. It is normal for it to change when it comes to the volume of transactions, or the productivity of satellite offices, because these employees are not fully operational on the first day.

Government Operations committee  I understand why we are asked that question a lot. This is not just based on our intuition. If you study this, you will see that as of the month of July, there were a certain number. How are we going to manage to resolve all of the cases in the backlog? The same curve that applies to the compensation officers—the one that looks like a hockey stick—applies to the resolution of cases, but with a lag.

Government Operations committee  Priority three is, as you say, the backlog of 82,000 people—I'm going to use that word now—so as I said earlier, we do have incoming transactions that are dealt with by Miramichi. They are dealt with not at the pace that we hope they will be dealt with when we are fully operational and have reached our steady state, so we are not meeting our service standards in every case.

Government Operations committee  They're not being paid incorrectly; they're not being paid at the right time. There's a time service standard. In some cases we're not meeting the time, but we will as soon as we get to our steady state.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure if it's IBM. There are programs, but I am not sure whether the contractor concerned is IBM or another company.

Government Operations committee  I'll make sure that Gavin gives you the background on the consultant and the leading up to...but what is very clear is that we did recommend to the minister that it was ready to go. With all the information we had, with the consultants, with the third party, with all the testing—

Government Operations committee  Well, one of the.... Can I let you go with this, Gavin?

Government Operations committee  The thinking behind self-serve is that it becomes a much more interactive system, and for the employee at any level, it gives them access quickly to their information, direct entry. I was asked what it does for the future generation of public servants. I think that's actually the type of system that the future generation of public servants will really enjoy, because it gives them access directly.

Government Operations committee  I'm not able to provide you with that right away. Maybe in the next hour we'll be able to, if that's okay, when Brigitte will be joining us.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. If we're looking at extra-duty pay, now an employee can actually go into the system and put in their hours, and their managers can approve them, and that doesn't even go through the pay centre. That is now automatic, and they normally get it within eight to 15 days, depending on how long it takes for their managers to approve it, and for the process to take place.

Government Operations committee  Was I aware, sorry?

Government Operations committee  Again, I don't want to say that we're comparing apples and oranges, but the 77 were the complaints that we were tracking through the pay centre. If you remember what I said earlier about getting the information from the users as much as we could, the issues that were out there, we got some....

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Our colleagues from Finance are also involved in our discussions. Our objective is to clear everything that we can before the end of the year, because that obviously would the ideal situation. But we have—

Government Operations committee  As I said, the finance department is involved also, so we have a whole-of-government approach on this one.