u/HandcuffsOfGold

>Government trying out embedding pay support staff in departments

>The federal government is trying a different, albeit somewhat familiar approach to payroll support as part of its work to move on from the troubled Phoenix pay system.

>This year, it is trying out a model where dedicated support workers focus on a single department or agency, specifically Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and Shared Services Canada.

>The decade-old Phoenix pay system, which overpaid and underpaid thousands of public servants, uses a centralized model where government-wide support is offered out of support centres in communities such as Miramichi, N.B.

>Before Phoenix, the government had decentralized support with staff dedicated to specific departments. A PSPC spokesperson told Radio-Canada the pilot isn't meant to return to the early 2010s, rather to help find the approach that works best now.

>Radio-Canada has learned the 167 support workers for those two departments are having problems about 10 per cent of the time.

>The president of the Government Services Union, which represents payroll workers, said feedback so far has been mostly negative.

>"Processing cases is taking longer and is more frustrating because employees are isolated," said Bruce Roy in French earlier this month.

>He added that his members have largely, finally been able to figure out how to make Phoenix work well.

>PSPC data shows that since the start of 2025, its pay accuracy has been above 97 per cent. Month-by-month rates range from 97.8 to 99.3 per cent.

>The 214,000 Phoenix transactions awaiting processing as of the end of April were down from the backlog of 320,000 in May 2025, according to PSPC.

>The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) union's president Sean O'Reilly told Radio-Canada that decentralizing is a good idea to fix Phoenix's centralization problem, as long as it doesn't set up silos between departments.

>The year-long pilot will look at categories such as the number of errors, the number of cases closed and meeting service standards.

>Dayforce, the software which will replace Phoenix, is slated to be fully operational by 2030.

>With files from Radio-Canada's Estelle Côté-Sroka and David Fraser