And the really frustrating thing is - there are people (like me and others on here right now) who'd be perfectly happy to sit and unravel and fix this monstrosity, but software development "how long is that going to take? And you'd better say a day" methodology prohibits any sort of complex/deep work.
Why would they choose you, when the contracted company can bill $300/hr per developer for 'change requests' to fix the system. They don't want to fix it, they want to fix each individual problem as it comes up.
I read one expert describe the Phoenix pay system as "garbage in, garbage out". The government signed hundreds of separate collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, each with their own different rules for pay, overtime, etc, making the system highly complex. Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs. Arguably it's partially a failure on the government's part not to negotiate a standard set of pay practices.
The Phoenix pay system is something crafted by the previous government (under Harper) with the idea of creating a "Shared Government Services" department so that each department would not have its own pay system, its own email, etc. The only redundant systems permitted were those related to national security (and AIUI, that was grudgingly given).
It’s completely unsurprising that a top-down mandating of shared services requiring a rewrite / reimplementation of pretty much everything that government departments use would go bad very quickly and have lingering effects. It’s also understandable that it was impossible to reverse the course once started, because institutional knowledge was lost (people who knew how the old systems worked retired out or quit, etc.). This, of course, has led to throwing more money at a money pit.
Fortunately, it looks like they’ve finally filled it—but that doesn’t do anything for the thousands of people who were broken by this boondoggle.
However, that isn't an excuse for the "we need to be able to audit the system and explain where each cent in the deductions goes." For anything dealing with money, that is a fundamental and necessary requirement.
Bugs happen. Payroll is one of the the more complex systems. Payroll without auditing is something that is unforgivable.
> The government signed hundreds of separate collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions... Arguably it's partially a failure on the government's part not to negotiate a standard set of pay practices.
Honestly, I doubt the fault lies with unions. Did their previous pay system handle this? Don't private sector companies handle lots of different union rules? Doesn't stuff like SAP handle far more complicated legal and accounting rules across many many nations?
My guess is what really happened is they cheaped out given their requirements and/or adopted too-aggressive deadlines, and the failure proceeded from there.
> Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs.
The world is complicated. It's hella backwards to expect it to twist to conform to what would be simple to implement in software.
Ignoring that this is pointless pedantry, I don't really think so. I think it says that complex is on the high end of the scale, and dumbing something down slides it towards the low end of simple.
I'm not sure why they aren't treating this as a possible embezzlement? It seems to me like anyone familiar with this system could take payments for someone apparently without tracking and the result would be clawed back from later paychecks. Who is to say if 200k illegitimate bank accounts are receiving transfers every month?
It's been 5 years since she first got $0 paychecks and this still hasn't been resolved?
I'm confused why the union or whoever can't sue the government on their behalf. Or some lawyer takes on a bunch of their cases if it's 200k people affected.
it seems to be a natural law that once a society takes the steps to create a government that "grants" rights to the citizens, the road to a hell is already paved. It is now inevitable that the government will see citizens as their property, and all justice is lost.
I'm confused about why she stayed? It doesn't say she ever got any money back. I would be gone after the first 0$ check, why would you stay after that?