Department of PublicWorks and Government Services- Canada Project type:Newpayroll system Project name :Phoenix Date :Jul 2016 Cost :$50M

Synopsis : A Phoenix is supposed to rise from the flames. Instead of rising, Canada's new federal government payroll system (called Phoenix)seems to be stuck firmly in theflames.According to reports from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), since the deployment of a new payroll system started inFeb 2016, as good percentage ofpublic servants have been incorrectly paid. Some have received too little, some too much and some have received no pay at all. Some employees have reported receiving no pay for a full five months resulting in people having to borrow, dip into retirement savings or simply not pay their bills. The CBC has been championing the cases of the affected workers and has collated sample stories in the following links...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-parental-leave-1.3679016

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-no-benefits-1.3680709

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-cancer-sick-leave-cecilia-1.3678940

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-single-mother-1.3677464

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-story-student-1.3675360

As soon as the system was launched it was clear there were problems. As many as 7,000 calls per day were received by the system help desk. Being sized for a maximum of 2,200 calls per day the help desk was quickly overcome. By Julyof 2016, the number of outstanding problems reported by government employees had reached a staggering 82,000 cases. An analysis of the problems by government staff and IBM (the IT systems provider) found that the costs to address the ousting issues could be as a high as $50M).

Contributing factors as reported in the press: Failure to provide users with adequate training. Failure to cleanse data prior to migration to the new system. Software quality issues. Failure to have sufficient resources on hand to address launch glitches and problems.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-payday-troubles-public-servant-quits-1.3695726

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-ottawa-timeline-1.3691812

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-meeting-phoenix-payroll-1.3693794

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/phoenix-fix-cost-hits-25m-1.3728864

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-update-deadline-1.3751126

The Prime Minister has asked you to come in with your team and try to figure out what went wrong.

1. Explain how you would start building your case with executives including the Prime Minister to ensure that you recevied all of the resources you might need?

2. You are asked to hold a briefing to explain what your action plan is going to be. What senior leadership, managers, or workers would you ask to attend? And why? I am really interested to see who you would pull together to start building the network you need .

3. Suppose you find out capacity planning was the issue as the organization wasn't nearly mature as they think they are. Using the content you read in chapter 21 what do you do to get executives to understand this? Just set your approach up. You don't have to dive into the details at this point. I want to know what your major points of intererest and focus are.