George Wallace
Army.ca Dinosaur
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SupersonicMax said:
I imagine their bonus' for getting the number of subordinates contributing to the Unite Way is greatly affected, as well.
Phoenix Pay System - Shit's Horrible
- Thread starter NSDreamer
- Start date
I imagine their bonus' for getting the number of subordinates contributing to the Unite Way is greatly affected, as well.
In the reserve world, if someone didn't get paid because they didn't fill out a pay sheet, that's not the problem of the pay office, the pay mangers, or the pay system (RPSR); the problem is with the member not filling out their damn pay sheet!
In the Reserve world it was not unheard of to not be paid for six months when you first joined up. Lots of excuses but little action. It was also not un common to go on a Class B contract and be paid incorrectly or not for a few pay periods. The same for a Class C Reservist. The system always fell back on to the "it is up to the individual Soldier to ensure their pay s correct". fair enough. I remember argueing with the Orderly room, I had a Soldier not paid for 2 months, they blamed him for the lack of pay. Turns out a Clerk messed up the paper work. Yet it was the Soldiers fault.
This is how they have always done things. If a Clerk messes up very little to nothing is done to discipline the person. Yet it is the individual who suffers the mess up.
To be honest if you have Soldiers not signing a pay sheet who are in attendance it tells me that your not doing doing Roll call at the start of training. I always made sure my Troops signed the pay sheet. I also made sure I dealt with pay issues quickly and always went to the IC and demanded immediate results.
I have to think the new pay system for the public service is having issues with more then the individual is not doing it correctly. The truth will be some where between blame the individual for the problem and blame the Supervisor. With little to no blame on the program itself.
In the Reserve world it was not unheard of to not be paid for six months when you first joined up. Lots of excuses but little action. It was also not un common to go on a Class B contract and be paid incorrectly or not for a few pay periods. The same for a Class C Reservist. The system always fell back on to the "it is up to the individual Soldier to ensure their pay s correct". fair enough. I remember argueing with the Orderly room, I had a Soldier not paid for 2 months, they blamed him for the lack of pay. Turns out a Clerk messed up the paper work. Yet it was the Soldiers fault.
This is how they have always done things. If a Clerk messes up very little to nothing is done to discipline the person. Yet it is the individual who suffers the mess up.
To be honest if you have Soldiers not signing a pay sheet who are in attendance it tells me that your not doing doing Roll call at the start of training. I always made sure my Troops signed the pay sheet. I also made sure I dealt with pay issues quickly and always went to the IC and demanded immediate results.
I have to think the new pay system for the public service is having issues with more then the individual is not doing it correctly. The truth will be some where between blame the individual for the problem and blame the Supervisor. With little to no blame on the program itself.
"To do it over again, I would have made training absolutely mandatory," she said.
So they took surplus employees from another government software boondoggle, The Firearms Program, AND put them to work in the new pay system AND didn't think they needed mandatory training in one of the most illiterate areas of Atlantic Canada.
So they took surplus employees from another government software boondoggle, The Firearms Program, AND put them to work in the new pay system AND didn't think they needed mandatory training in one of the most illiterate areas of Atlantic Canada.
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Good2Golf said:
CTD said:
Right so, as a military manager, and keep in mind I am accountable for over a hundred civilians, I was in NO way adequately trained.
If you had 9-5 Civilian employees with no special things on their file you might be lucky. I had people returning from sick leave who just never got added to phoenix, and so were never paid. I had people who were on variable shifts whose entire schedule kept getting reverted to 1 hour a week no matter how many times we changed it back. I had no ability to enter into Phoenix and had to do everything through pay compensation enquiry system whose online documented processes are far from complete which leads to multiple submissions for the same file. I, and my staff, spent literal days as in periods collected equalling greater then 48 hours on the phone with their people, the pay office, the enquiry people, phoenix and eventually the treasury board.
Please do not deflect this on management, or on the civilians. Yes, some people could probably have done better, but this was an extremely poorly executed move. When the pay centre begged the government to stop transferring files 4 months after launch, the department ignored it and transferred 80 000 more. My team has been furious because they have being told there is nothing they can do and its a waiting game as we have members who are simply not being paid. It also doesn't help that when we issue the Emergency pays, we are being told they will all be deducted off the first normal pay rather then being spread out. So if 3 months of emergency pay comes off your first pay all at once you get paid an amazing 0$ again as the back pay will apparently be coming separately.
Don't get me starting on leave with income averaging folks being screwed over with clawbacks...
Right...getting worked up /end rant
Not to mention the hash that Phoenix has done on MATA/PATA benefits. Not only is messing with new parents wholly loathsome, but screwing with people's pay and benefits based on their family status is probably in violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
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NSDreamer said:
NSDreamer, I had a small number of PS civilians with established career streams and no exceptional elements to their pay situation, so I think that my training (yes, it was not anywhere near the most comprehensive on-line training I've ever taken) was sufficient to understand the transition overall and more importantly to have a rapport with my civilian team members. That said, the fact that I and every other military manager had no direct visibility to our civilian subordinates' specifics because we did not have a PRI, and thus not electronically 'engagable' in the case of any Phoenix system is but one of the overall issues with the roll-out.
I find it deplorable that executives are trying to portray mis-management on the part of users, managers and HR operators, while the executives, "upon reflection" might have considered (more involved) training as mandatory... :
Jeez, ya think??? :not-again:I also find it strange that the executives say it's only a training challenge, yet in the next breath, note how the Phoenix will need $50M at least, to fix the system. Those two positions are pretty much diametrically opposed, IMO.
I hope that the Public Service Labour Relations Board tribunal was not as far as the senior PSPC leadership is going to be "held to account"...
:2c:
Regards,
G2G
NSDreamer said:
I worked on AITIS Project from 1995 to 2000, 1993 to 1999 was building a working prototype in stages adding the first users in 1997. 1999 to 2008 was building the system as a functional model that reflected the organization of army training and could be multi platform. Even now it is not perfect BUT it just moved to ACIMS (SharePoint) from Documentum as I retired so it did fit as a multi function platform. Talking with the AITIS folks, the move was very smooth and the Army National Calendar is finally part of AITIS (which was planned in 1994). But that gives you an idea how long it should take to make a successful custom application on an enterprise scale integrate smoothly. One thing we did do was reams of user training, much of it in user location and face to face for the initial training. Training should always be a lot of hand holding. Now if they would only build the infrastructure to serve every training video from a central location, we could say mission accomplished.
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Lightguns said:
ACIMS.... I shudder every time a link takes me to that..."thing". It's even less user friendly that the new standardized web pages for the rest of the military (such as the new Defence Team and RCN home pages).I could write a whole page of complaints about ACIMS, but I don't want to hijack this thread.
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Perhaps someone brought in an outside contractor...... www.dyingwithdignity.caGood2Golf said:
Occam said:
Neither are websites, they are content management systems designed to serve documents not propaganda. There is simple user paced training for both which should be mandatory but again isn't, so some folks have issues doing their jobs in ACIMS/DRMIS.
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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Websites became a real pain to deal with. It’s almost impossible to change things in a timely manner and getting everything translated costs huge amounts of time and money. Funny yesterday, looking at a 125 page document with almost no maps, apparently all the title blocks need to be translated, even when the maps are submitted by an outside proponent, so it’s easier not to have maps to get the document posted, except that maps really help the end users who on this coast don’t give a crap about the French. I spend a great deal of time trying to help clients find stuff on our website. Many of our pages are just endless loops. The only good thing they did was to make them google friendly.
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CBC is reporting that, given two independent reviews of Phoenix prior to go-live, the staff at PSPC decided to give the minister the rosier one. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/minister-not-briefed-on-independent-phoenix-analysis-1.3773148
In reading the CBC story, it appears that at go live the system had never been tested end-to-end; there was no detailed test plan; and there was no fallback plan if rollout didn't work.
Anyone with project management experience feel free to chime in, but that does not sound like anything that respected PMBOK.
In reading the CBC story, it appears that at go live the system had never been tested end-to-end; there was no detailed test plan; and there was no fallback plan if rollout didn't work.
Anyone with project management experience feel free to chime in, but that does not sound like anything that respected PMBOK.
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