Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. Hello, committee members. Joining me from Public Services and Procurement Canada are Les Linklater, associate deputy minister, human resources-to-pay stabilization; Michael Vandergrift, associate deputy minister; Marty Muldoon, chief financial officer, finance and a

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair and committee members, I welcome the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon to discuss the 2017-18 supplementary estimates (A) for Public Services and Procurement Canada and Shared Services Canada. As many of you are aware, both departments play an integral ro

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for your question. As I said in my speech, we are taking a real client-centred approach to addressing pay issues. We have recognized that it's better to address employees as a whole and to deal with all of their individual transactions. That is what has happened throug

Government Operations committee  Yes. As I said, we have increased capacity from the 550 who were in place when we launched Phoenix to approximately 1,500. These are certainly not the exact individuals because some, of course, had moved on or retired, but we have replaced those individuals.

Government Operations committee  As of October of this year—so just last month—we have pay pods servicing approximately half of the clients served by the pay centre, so approximately 110,000 employees. By next May, all employees serviced by the pay centre will have pay pods in place.

Government Operations committee  Les and his team have done a lot of work to identify the operational readiness of a department or an agency to be able to deliver through the pay pod model. Working with departments and agencies, they have basically determined a rollout list of when a certain department or agency

Government Operations committee  We're definitely building on the improvements and the lessons learned over the past three years, and we have been for some time. In fact, I'm not sure the work ever stopped from last season. We've been preparing for this upcoming season. CRA, TBS, unions and employees themselves

Government Operations committee  Yes, we definitely have a close working relationship with IBM. We've set up a technical experts committee with IBM, Oracle and the department. It's a cross-department initiative that ensures all technical issues are addressed immediately and don't become problems, and it has work

Government Operations committee  It is my understanding that arrangements have actually been made between DND.... I understand that question was asked of the President of the Treasury Board and arrangements are now being made.

Government Operations committee  When exactly will it be released, Michael?

Government Operations committee  All I can tell you is that DND and the PBO are working out those details right now.

Government Operations committee  As of this morning, my understanding is that they're working out those details.