[halostatue]

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.