December 5, 2024 • 37 mins
From Ashes to Solutions: The Phoenix Project Revisited
Today, my guest is Alex Benay. Alex has recently returned to the federal service of Canada to lead the modernization of Canada's federal payroll system. Starting in 2009 and launching in 2015. The Phoenix project was meant to replace a 40 year old technology stack and save millions of taxpayer dollars each year. However, after launch it quickly became apparent that there were major inconsistencies and gaps in paying Canada's, 290,000 federal civil servants. The project has continued to be a black eye for the government and costs have continued to bloom. This is the kind of project that most people stay far away from. But Alex is no stranger to courageous initiatives.
Resource Links:
- Alex Benay - LinkedIn
- Cynefin Model
- Goss Gilroy Inc.
- Miramichi
- Accenture
- Edward Guest “It Couldn’t Be Done”
- Industry Partners mentioned:
- Audit Reports
Recorded in September of 2024
This is a show about the people that make digital public service work. If you'd like to find out more, visit northern.co/311-podcast/
We're going to keep having conversations like this. If you've got ideas of guests we should speak to, send us an email to the311@northern.co.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Paul Bellows (00:31):
This is the 3, 1, 1 podcast.
I'm your host, Paul bellows.
This is a show about the peoplethat make digital work for the
public service.
If you'd like to find out more.
Visit northern.co.
Today, my guest is Alex Benay.
Alex has recently returned tothe federal service of Canada to
(00:53):
lead the modernization ofCanada's federal payroll system.
Starting in 2009 and launchingin 2015.
The Phoenix project was meant toreplace a 40 year old technology
stack and save millions oftaxpayer dollars each year.
However, after launch it quicklybecame apparent that there were
(01:14):
major inconsistencies and gapsin paying Canada's, 290,000
federal civil servants.
The project has continued to bea black eye for the government
and costs have continued tobloom.
This is the kind of project thatmost people stay far away from.
But Alex is no stranger tocourageous initiatives.
(01:37):
As Canada's former chiefinformation officer Alex has
also held global leadershippositions with Open Text and
Microsoft.
He's known as a change maker anda disruptor.
But this initiative may well behis most significant
contribution to the effectivedelivery of government services.
As he makes clear, this issomething Canada can't fail at.
(01:59):
I think you'll appreciate Alex'srefreshingly people first take
on technology projects as wellas his fearlessness and
humility.
Here's my conversation with AlexBenay.
Alex Benay (02:13):
My name is Alex Benet.
I'm the one of the threeAssociate Deputy Ministers here
at Public Services andProcurement Canada.
Amongst a few things, my job ismainly quote unquote pay, which
turns out is more than pay.
It's HR, it's data, and it'sactually, mostly about people
and culture, good and bad.
So that's my job.
I've been in and outtagovernment my whole life.
(02:35):
Don't really agree to fitting ina box in an org structure, which
government is very good at that,but I'm not, so I need breaks.
I was the CIO of Canada, leftfor four or five years, did
Microsoft, KPMG around theworld, and then came back to
Canada.
One of the things that, throughconversations was that yeah,
they still had this Phoenixproblem and they still had other
(02:56):
problems in tech.
It's a big organization, theGovernment to Canada.
So it's normal that it has thisstuff, by the way.
Like banks are the same, theyjust don't talk about it.
But the Phoenix thing, Iactually think it's one that's
fixable.
It's just, it's gonna be a longhaul.
Payroll transformation is nevereasy.
I think for the people thatactually have suffered from
this, I came back'cause I thinkthey deserve better than that.
(03:18):
And so to me, the mission isjust the coolest ever.
But it's actually not fixingPhoenix.
It's fixing how we deliver.
And I told everybody that fromthe beginning.
This isn't about fixing Phoenix,ultimately it is.
But it has to be the use case tofix other things that create
Phoenixes for us.
Paul Bellows (03:33):
Yeah.
How do we not get to the nextPhoenix?
So I wanted to get to two thingsthat you said.
So first I love that youcompared it to a bank because we
all pay user fees to a bank.
They're taking our money andthey're running bad technology
projects and good technologyprojects.
Federal government also takessome of our, the public's,
money.
Alex Benay (03:49):
They do.
Paul Bellows (03:49):
It does bad and good technology projects.
One of them hits the media a lotmore though.
I'm gonna imagine that there'ssomeone listening to this who we
talked about Phoenix, andthey're like, what?
The, the bird, in Harry Potter?
What are we talking about?
Phoenix is the codename, theinternal project name for a
payroll transformation project.
What's the actual nature of theproject?
What's happening inside it?
Why is this hard?
Alex Benay (04:09):
Yeah.
The initial goal was toconsolidate and reduce the
amount of compensation advisorsin the Government of Canada down
to about 500, by introducingthis great new software back in
2016, 2017.
We code named Phoenix, which forany of the technologists that
will listen to your podcast, youshould never name a tech project
Phoenix.
I keep reminding people of that.
Paul Bellows (04:28):
Something that burns down on a regular basis.
Alex Benay (04:30):
Yeah.
In our case, hasn't gotten backup very easily, so don't tempt
fate.
Things went awfully wrong, likebasically everything you could
do from a leadership perspectivefailed.
We tried to harvest savingsbefore proving the technology
work.
We didn't transfer clean data.
We didn't do enough testing.
There's enough audit reports.
Anybody who wants to dive intoPhoenix will find the Auditor
(04:51):
General's reports, Goss Gilroyis another good one that people
should probably read if they'reinterested in diving into this.
But essentially everything wecould have done wrong, we did
wrong.
And for the last eight years,seven years, we've been kind of
trying to make things worse,work as best we can.
It's easy to ridicule it, it'seasy to point the finger at
another big government failure.
But I have to say like thethousands of people that we've
(05:12):
hired that actually slave awayat this thing, are using
probably one of the worsttechnology deployments that you
can think of and are stillmanaging to pay.
Like last year we paid 13.1million, had 13.1 million
transactions or payroll go well,but you're not gonna talk about
that.
You're gonna talk about theother ones that didn't go well.
But the other side of theproblem is there's about 1.6
(05:34):
million of those transactionsthat require manual
interventions because the systemis bad or because we thought
that through goodwilldepartments would send us data
on time and clean.
We know that there's no amountof goodwill that buys you clean
data and good processstandardization.
So that's what we deal with on adaily basis.
Now we have about 30 HR systems,it's gone down over the years,
(05:56):
that is feeding one pay system.
And people can send us what theywant, however they want at the
time they want, they try not to,but they always do.
And then we have to clean upthat stuff and then turn it into
a payment, right?
So it's just, the problem isbecause of the scale.
If you don't address the issuesquickly, it just magnifies.
And so it's been magnified andincreasing over the last seven
(06:17):
years.
Now there's a solution andthere's a way off of that, we
could talk about that.
But it, frankly, it took us along time to get to a point
where we admitted it was afailure in the first place.
And that's probably the biggest,if you can't admit it's a
problem, you can't fix theproblem.
We just wanted to try to fix itso badly that, you know, we just
couldn't admit that it gets to apoint where you have to be able
to say, this isn't gonna work.
(06:39):
And we've been able to do thatin the last 18 months, and as a
result, I think there's beensome pretty good progress.
Paul Bellows (06:43):
So I think root cause analysis is the core tech
skill that you need, and whenyou don't have root cause
analysis, when you don't knowwhat's actually wrong, you can
never fix a problem.
But you talked a little bitabout scale, and I'm curious,
can you just quantify a littlebit, some folks will think, oh,
the Federal Government ofCanada, Canada's not necessarily
that big a place, but ourGovernment is a little bit of
everything, right?
Like we're everything from parkrangers to folks in offices here
(07:05):
in Ottawa.
Alex Benay (07:05):
Teachers, administrative workers,
correctional officers
Paul Bellows (07:08):
yeah.
Alex Benay (07:08):
Border guard agents, military personnel, you name it.
So, it varies, let's say roughly400,000 different federal
employees, give or take, at themoment.
And dozens upon dozens anddozens of different departments
who all think they have to do HRslightly differently and
therefore try to.
Square, multiple square pegmeets one round hole is sort of
the nature of it.
(07:29):
So yeah, the scale is quitelarge, at least by Canadian
standards, but probably by anystandard, frankly, when you get
to this amount of scale.
It is quite big and it is quitediverse.
And it is complex.
So it's not to make excuses,it's just that's the nature of
the beast.
Paul Bellows (07:42):
Complexity, I think, is a really important
word.
There's the Cynefin model ofproblem definition and I love
Jim Snow's definition of that,which is: complexity is, no one
person can do this on his own,and there is no existing
solution we can take off theshelf for making something
that's novel.
And when you have those twoconditions, that's how he
defines complexity.
Alex Benay (07:59):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (07:59):
Which seems to be playing here.
You talked about 30 differentpayroll systems, all getting
unified into one piece ofsoftware.
And these payroll systems havebeen configured and changed and
improved with all kinds ofregional, and we have multiple
languages here in Canada andvery diverse regions, who
probably don't ever talk to eachother.
So I would imagine you'rewalking into, essentially 30
(08:19):
pieces of completely bespoke,unique software that have been
around for decades.
Am I right with that?
Alex Benay (08:24):
Yes and no.
They're all very different,right?
One organization will use SAP,another organization will use
Oracle.
This other organization will useOracle, but slightly different
than this organization.
They're on different versions,so at least they're not
completely bespoke on the HRside.
Paul Bellows (08:38):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (08:38):
The challenge I think with Phoenix is mostly a
cultural one.
We have a culture that maybeveers on the entitlement a
little bit too much.
And what I mean by that is,well, we're so different, right?
That we have to have this thingdifferent because it works for
us.
Paul Bellows (08:52):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (08:53):
But it doesn't work for the end user, which is the
civil servant who's not gettingpaid.
Paul Bellows (08:56):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (08:57):
Because if we all agree that that's the real
mission and that's the realgoal, so whether you work in hr,
compensation or other places, wewould just probably willingly
all do the same thing easily inorder to pay the end user, which
is the person not getting paid.
That hasn't happened yet.
The good news is I think we'vegot enough alignment now between
all of our central agencies andour senior leadership to say
enough.
(09:17):
If you're gonna be different,you better be really different.
So I'll give you an example.
The Canadian Coast Guard,everybody's heard about how
different and complex they are.
The Canadian Coast Guard is nodifferent than a grocery store
because the system doesn't carethat you are in a Coast Guard or
in a grocery store.
So when I hear things like, wehave these 10 or 15 minute
acting rules that are reallyhard to calculate, and we have
(09:39):
all these different unions.
Okay, a large grocery chain inCanada, the clerks at the cash,
which was my son for a while,wants to go out on a Friday with
friends and it's Fridayafternoon and changes his shift
at last second, they still gotpaid on time and accurately.
One of the large chains hasover, I think, four dozen unions
in Quebec only in one province.
(10:00):
So we have to stop saying thatwe're so different and that we
can't actually take a piece ofsoftware and change what we do,
'cause otherwise that's wherethe entitlement comes in.
And do what the rest of theworld does, which is use the
software the way it wasdesigned.
Because at the end of the day,like hiring is, hiring is,
hiring, right?
So an easy example for that iswe've put some unified actions
(10:22):
for pay in place of late to tryto bring the town, quote
unquote, on the same page, andit's you will not hire on any
other day except Thursday afterpay.
It's no different than when Istarted at Microsoft.
It's no different, back in thetwo thousands and nineties when
I was at OpenText, you get hiredthe day after pay.
Why?
So you don't mess up thepayroll.
Like it's pretty simple.
(10:43):
Yet we hire whenever we wantbecause our things are so
urgent.
So it just gets back to thecultural entitlement that we
have.
We have to stop that.
Because there's outcomes thatare more important than what,
how different we think we are.
Paul Bellows (10:55):
So changing culture, I love this'cause,
often we look at technology as,it's just code.
Alex Benay (10:59):
Yeah.
This isn't a tech project.
Paul Bellows (11:01):
No, it's a cultural project, right.
Alex Benay (11:02):
It's a hundred percent a culture project.
Paul Bellows (11:03):
So you get brought back into the federal government
of Canada, you've gone out toMicrosoft and you've seen that
the unique private sectordysfunctions that exist,
Alex Benay (11:11):
Everybody thinks it's public sector that's
dysfunctional.
Paul Bellows (11:13):
No, it's everywhere.
It's everywhere.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's not better, I'm like, whopays Microsoft?
Right?
Alex Benay (11:17):
And for the record on your podcast, any other
private company not picking onMicrosoft.
Paul Bellows (11:20):
No, exactly.
Any private company including myown.
So when you get into a culturechange project and you start to
identify, this code can befixed, there are rules that
exist here that can be codified.
And turned into code,requirements and code, and this
can be built and scaled, butfirst we have to change culture.
So first of all, sitting in atech seat, how do you start to
change culture?
(11:40):
What is your mindset about that?
How do you approach thatproblem?
Alex Benay (11:43):
Yeah, that's a great question.
One of the reasons I, I didn't,I didn't burn out last time.
I was CIO of Canada, but I gottired at some point, was because
like everybody's like, well, youhave to change the culture of IT
and Government.
And I was like, okay, all right.
I'm gonna change the culture ofgovernment, brand new job.
Let's go, rah rah.
Paul Bellows (11:57):
Because it's culture that needs to change,
not the whole rest of theorganization.
Alex Benay (12:00):
Exactly.
And then I started realizing,wait a minute.
Like these things are alldesigned through different
mechanisms that are way upstreamfrom anything I can control.
So now I have to change theculture of government, and then
I was like, they have like 150year head start on me.
Paul Bellows (12:11):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (12:12):
And we do things the way we do'em.
I'm not gonna say for a reason,but sometimes through
inheritance and it's not easy tochange.
So in the case of the projecthere, what was appealing to me
was like, okay, this issomething I can, to an extent
wrap my arms around a bit more.
'cause it's more precise.
Paul Bellows (12:28):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (12:28):
Okay.
So problem one.
How do you wrap your arms aroundit?
So the good news is I mentionedalignment earlier.
I don't think that the head ofHR's office, a Treasury Board
secretary, which is thedepartment that takes care of
all of our administrativepolicies and central directions
and strategies, and ourdepartment on the execution
level has ever been morealigned.
So there is no daylight betweenthe two organizations when
(12:51):
they're in negotiating thingsfor new employment terms, we're
at the table.
When we can't jam any morechanges in our schedule, we're
asking them to prioritize.
That's never existed before.
So step one is like get theownership of the business and
sort of the technology people inthe room together.
And it sounds simple, but wedon't do that.
We don't throw people in a roommultidisciplinary-aly, sort of
(13:12):
thinking together and then say,you're not walking out.
Here's a pizza box, a deodorantand a toothbrush.
The door's locked.
I'm sure that violates a lot ofcollective agreements and human
rights, so probably can't dothat.
But it should be that draconian,right?
This is a massive problem.
Fix it We were able to startdoing that.
So that's thing one.
Then we got more of the centralagencies on board, or with
(13:33):
whoever controls the money orPrime Minister's office through
our privy council office.
Everybody's on the same pagenow.
So that was step one, I think.
Step two is like the extendedgroup of people that you can, at
a senior leadership, becauseultimately this has been a
senior leadership failure.
This has been an inability topivot.
Because we don't have enoughpeople that have diverse
experience sets we were not ablefor seven years to come up with
(13:54):
different solutions.
People realize that now.
Okay, great, so now we can fixit.
So, but like having those firstconversations are hard.
I remember starting off saying,this is a culture project, not
an IT one.
Our culture needs to change.
Everybody's looking at me like,heck no, our culture's great.
I was like, well, let's see.
So you start throwing things outas a test and then you start
adjusting.
And then the other part, I'd saythe third part of that equation
(14:17):
is once you've got everybody,sort of, on the same page, you
have to be radically transparentabout what you're doing.
And that as well has been ashift.
We now have a program in placecalled Transparency by Design,
which is like most of thedocuments we produce are
available to the public.
We started releasing those.
So available now I think is themonth of June, meeting minutes
of Deputy Ministers or Recordsof Decisions architecture, third
(14:39):
party reviews.
It has to be made public likethis, this blunder of ours is
costing Canadians.
We have to make thistransparent.
We have to show that we can makea little bit of progress and
gain a little bit of trust inthe process, even if it is
incremental.
And frankly, I'd rather beincremental than Big Bang'cause
we know the cost of that.
So getting the business and thetech together, getting the
(15:00):
culture decision nailed downwith some of the senior managers
in town, and then putting theplan in place and being
radically transparent about it.
We meet with media once aquarter, meet with all staff
once a quarter, all governmentstaff, encouraging our own staff
to talk about their stories.
That's next.
Keep us honest and here's wherewe're messing up and here's
where we're doing well I thinkthrough that.
(15:21):
you'll at least be able tocreate momentum.
Change culture, I don't know.
Paul Bellows (15:24):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (15:25):
But create momentum.
I think so.
Paul Bellows (15:27):
One other framing of culture that I like, that
I've inherited, this is not inmy creation, culture is what
someone, what a person in theorganization believes is
possible and necessary.
Those two river banks and thenlike culture is all the stuff
you do in the middle of thosetwo river banks.
What is something that youbelieve should be, or that you
wish to be possible here in thefederal service around a project
(15:48):
like this that maybe let's say10 years ago, when we started
down this road wasn't possiblefor an individual.
Alex Benay (15:54):
I'll just pause culture for a second.
Paul Bellows (15:56):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (15:56):
Go back to the tech part.
I remember when this thing cameout, we have 80,000 rules and I
remember being like, okay.
Well, it's not that manyactually, 80,000 rules.
To me is, like Amazon is apretty big company in like a
hundred and what, 40 countrieswith 140 sets of laws and then
policies and then unions in somecases and they still pay people.
Paul Bellows (16:14):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (16:15):
I never bought the rules excuse.
We started this project bysaying we have our current
engine that has a hard time, notjust with the amount of rules.
Sure.
'cause it's older tech.
But how we designed it andimplemented it was not good.
And then we have this new pieceof technology with Dayforce, a
Canadian provider, that is builtto withstand many, many, many
(16:36):
more rules than 88,000 withautomation with a bunch of other
stuff in there.
So to me, as we build thingsout, as we build our AI solution
for the backlog, we're showingit as we're building out
Dayforce.
We're about to show it comeDecember.
To say like it's not thatcomplicated.
Program the schedule of theofficer, the shift's officer,
and press a button on yourphone, if they have
(16:57):
connectivity, that's a differentconversation, sure.
But like it's not that hard.
So showing the thing on the techfront and how seamless it is,
creates two things on theculture front, either, holy
crap, this is gonna be great.
And we're seeing that from theend users.
We've done an engagement withabout a thousand people in a
room, like multiple rooms.
Paul Bellows (17:14):
Yeah.
And the end users are like,yeah, this is great.
But then the people that areimpacted by how the system's
gonna change their work, is theflip side of the culture, which
is this isn't gonna work.
And I can't blame them'cause wedidn't do it properly eight
years ago and we told'em eightyears ago, don't worry, you're
not gonna need as many people todo the work.
It's gonna be great.
This new ERP system's coming init's gonna do all the work for
(17:36):
you.
And guess what it's not true.
We've had to like dramaticallyincrease our compensation
advisors.
We've had people sleep undertheir, their literally their
offices over the course of therollout because just to get pay
out the door, super humaneffort.
So I don't blame them for beinghesitant and reticent about,
yeah, okay.
I've heard this song and dancebefore.
So the goal here is to show thething evolve all the time.
(17:59):
Because at some point you get toa point where if it's working
and it's demonstrable, uh,sorry, that's my French Canadian
side sticking out.
Then what are you gonna argue?
Yeah.
Alex Benay (18:07):
Because if you're still arguing, then it's you.
But we have to get to thatpoint.
We have to earn that.
And that's sort of what we'restarting to do now, is to earn
that.
I'll call it respect or trust, Iguess.
'cause we do operate in a trustdeficit.
So the tech stuff eight, 10years ago is not the same.
The ability to show it is notthe same.
Then the ability to engageonline is not the same.
So if we're not using the moderntool set and expecting that
(18:29):
we're gonna fix the problem byjust hiring more humans and
using a bad ERP system, then wedeserve failure.
So we're trying to kind of pivotthat a little bit.
Paul Bellows (18:36):
I don't wanna miss putting punctuation under the
Canadian government is usingCanadian technology for payroll
I love that.
Thank you.
That's great.
Alex Benay (18:44):
As an entrepreneur, I'm sure you appreciate that.
Paul Bellows (18:45):
Absolutely.
It's good.
Also that a Canadian company hadbuilt software that was good
enough for the federalGovernment of Canada to use.
Alex Benay (18:51):
Enough for Accenture globally to use...
Paul Bellows (18:53):
Absolutely.
Alex Benay (18:53):
in other places.
The deputy chief Human Resourcesofficer and myself just came
back from a trip to Europe tovisit all of their Europe
customers without Dayforce inthe room.
Paul Bellows (19:00):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (19:01):
And they loved them.
They absolutely love theengagement model.
Like it actually feels like it'sa Canadian company doing
Canadian engagement with theircustomers, which is kind of
cool.
Paul Bellows (19:08):
Excellent.
Alex Benay (19:08):
So they've been, they've been fantastic partners
so far.
Like, listen, the turbulence isup ahead for all of us.
We have to design and test abunch of things together and
there's some gaps on the productside, but to your point, there
would've been gaps anywhere.
Paul Bellows (19:20):
Absolutely.
Alex Benay (19:20):
But those gaps can be addressable through cloud
extensions, which they'rebuilding and they've been proven
that they can build and run, andthey've done that with us last
year.
But it feels pretty good.
And they're backed up by, twogood companies in EY and CGI and
it was all the most transparentprocurement I think I've ever
run or ever seen run globallyfor tech.
When we did this, four or fiveyears ago, it was through
bakeoffs, not binders and we'dco-designed with the suppliers
(19:44):
each round and each round weeliminated one until there was
only three, two or threestanding.
And over the course of it,Dayforce came out the winner.
Paul Bellows (19:50):
Just to pivot from culture for a little bit, to get
into the actual how we make thesausage, that, that side of
things.
Which isn't always pretty,
Alex Benay (19:55):
It's hard to make sausage.
Paul Bellows (19:57):
It absolutely it is.
I know some excellent sausagemakers back home and I
appreciate their craft.
Alex Benay (20:02):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (20:02):
So you've got multiple external vendors.
You've got, let's say a backlog,80,000 unique requirements.
You know, that's a, a bit of anoversimplification of where
we're at today.
But you're doing real time usertesting; you're getting features
in front of actual users; you'revalidating all the removing
staplers in desk now part; we'reactually gonna change people's
day-to-day, style of workingthat's happening, going to
(20:23):
managers who, this is how youwill do your job now.
Everyone loves to hear that, butall that hard work is happening.
What does the actual team instructure of the project look
like?
How are you building thesoftware?
Alex Benay (20:33):
Yeah, that's a great question.
When I first started, we had,the next gen project team, those
were the folks that were runningthe Dayforce stuff, the new
stuff.
Then we had PSPC taking care ofthe current stuff.
So thousands of compensationadvisors and hundreds of people
running the current platformwith IBM and a bunch of stuff.
(20:54):
So it is very much a mix ofpublic service employees and
private sector folks.
The first thing we did was weneed to bring all of this
together.
'cause we're not gonna do atransition by having teams on
one side, team on the otherside.
No handover.
So we put one CTO(ChiefTechnology Officer) in charge of
all the tech.
That's worked out quite well.
We've put somebody in charge ofdata and AI'cause all the third
party reports had said, youdon't do any data or AI.
(21:17):
And so we wanted to do that.
So we started by focusing onthat.
So we have one assistant deputyminister responsible for that.
We have someone in charge ofsort of our policy planning.
We do have to feed thegovernment beast.
You know, there's submissions,there's discussions, there's
policy there.
So a person in charge of that.
And then we have one person incharge of our operations, like
our heavy, heavy humanoperations, like the thousands
of compensation advisors.
So supporting us is IBM on thecurrent platform, as we all
(21:40):
know, and then a mixture ofDayforce, EY and CGI on, the new
stuff, which includes, AI in ourbacklog, for example, which has
been run by CGI project officerun by EY and Dayforce doing
their thing in the product.
So yeah, it's interestingbecause when I started the new
technology had never gone to thepay center yet, and I asked why,
and I just didn't get an answerI felt comfortable with.
(22:03):
So first thing we did was we,told the Toronto gang, you're
flying to Miramichi(NewBrunswick).
And they're like, oh, that's,it's far.
Turns out it's not easy to getto, but it was great.
And the first meeting everybody,you know, you could sell,
everybody had their sittingthere with their arms crossed,
like the language was amazing.
And we were talking aboutsprinting and agile and a bunch
of stuff that I'm sure ourprivate sector friends were used
(22:24):
to, but we certainly weren'tused to in government.
And then the second and thethird time, by the fourth or
fifth or sixth time, it startedgetting better.
So the thing is you just had toshove'em in a room together.
Now, there's still some peoplewith their arms crossed, and I
like them because, those are thepeople that once I convince them
or hopefully we do, then it'sgonna work.
Then I know, like you need thosesort of, those people that'll
(22:45):
challenge you to the very endand then say, okay, fine, I give
up.
And I want them to get to that.
I want them to say, okay, fine.
You know what, I can't think ofanything else.
Else.
So that was interestingculturally speaking, bringing
all of these groups together andI don't blame any one group over
the next, the new technologyteam had been told, oh, this is
just pie in the sky, it'll neverwork.
The current tech team were like,well, your product is horrible.
(23:07):
Everybody brings their scars tothe table.
So it's been interesting.
Now, it's one team, one projectaround town.
It's the first time I can,honestly say that the head of HR
could literally regurgitate ourproject plans.
I am not at the level where Icould step in for a head of HR.
That job is as complex or moreprobably than mine, but like
(23:29):
that alignment is there.
The culture and breaking downthe barriers is starting to come
along just within the team.
But at first it was veryinteresting.
It was very turf war.
It was very, who's right, who'swrong?
I remember asking them a fewtimes if they knew names of some
of the victims of Phoenix andnobody did.
And then I was like, this isn'tacceptable.
You can't sit here and defendturf if you don't know who's
(23:50):
been impacted.
So now what we're working oncurrently is defining our joint
mission statement.
I believe in mission overvalues.
Someone's gonna say that'sstupid, but if you believe in
the joint mission, the valueswill come.
We have public sector values andso it's not like we don't have
that stuff, but what is ouractual joint mission here?
It's been interesting to see thestaff sort of from across 6,000
(24:13):
people try to develop that.
So it's been fun.
Paul Bellows (24:15):
There's two interesting things I I wanna
call out and what you've said.
And first is you were kind ofjoking when you said, we wanna
lock people in a room with,pizza and a toothbrush.
Alex Benay (24:24):
On this podcast, I'm officially joking.
Paul Bellows (24:26):
Officially joking, but of course, as a human, you
would love the things we'd liketo do as humans versus what we
could do at our official roles.
Yeah.
What's below that though is, andyou talked about this, is
software is our organizationnow.
Alex Benay (24:37):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (24:38):
Software is the codification of the processes we
determine.
And you can't create a processthat doesn't involve software
and you can't take software thatdoesn't involve a process.
And you've built a team wherethose things have finally come
together.
Like just the fiction that youcould do one thing in one room
and the other thing in anotherroom and have it work out.
Alex Benay (24:54):
And we still do that for the record.
Paul Bellows (24:56):
Oh yeah.
Alex Benay (24:56):
We are absolutely.
I think as a project, an anomalyin the government of Canada.
I'm responsible for a coupleother projects and I'm like,
yeah, we're gonna bring users,us, like real Canadians, us, the
supplier of software in a roomtogether, and we're all gonna
sit there until, we build athing and that everybody says it
works and everybody says, ohyeah, we've done agile.
This, it's a term like, not, notjust this government here, like
(25:19):
in Ottawa, but it's, it iseverywhere in the public sector.
And it's called Agile GasLighting.
Paul Bellows (25:23):
Yes.
Alex Benay (25:24):
And it's when, people tell you they've done
agile and then you hear themtalk and they talk like they're
running a waterfall project fromthe 1990s.
We're no different than a lot ofmajor governments that way.
Paul Bellows (25:35):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (25:35):
But what we're starting to create here is, you
have to do the work different ifyou want a different outcome.
Even if you swapped out, Phoenixfor Dayforce.
If we don't do the workdifferently, it's gonna be the
same outcome, maybe a bitbetter, but it won't be the
outcome we want.
To your point about putting'emall in a room together, but
that's part of the culturechange, right?
Paul Bellows (25:52):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (25:53):
And, and the civil service, that is our federal
government.
We value very much policy peopleand communications people.
What gets us in trouble are ouroperations.
Time in, time out, all the time.
It's not policy, it's usuallynot comms.
It's our operations that get usin trouble.
But that's not what wenecessarily value.
So now what we're doing is we'reputting that on a pedestal.
(26:13):
We're saying your operationalchops are as important as the
policy people over at thecenter.
And they're working together.
It's not always easy.
We don't always agree, but justthe fact we're arguing about
something is really good.
To your point on the softwareand the codification, so it's
kind of fun to see, let's seewhere, you know, maybe we have
this conversation in a year andwe'll see if it worked.
If this project fails, it won'tbe because of Dayforce.
(26:34):
It'll be because of our culture.
Paul Bellows (26:36):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (26:36):
And that's what we have to address.
Paul Bellows (26:38):
A gift I got once is from my mom, of course, pay
attention to your mom is the keylesson here.
Alex Benay (26:43):
Mm-Hmm.
Paul Bellows (26:43):
But she got to go to Africa on a project to work.
She was doing leadershipdevelopment in an orphanage
project in Africa.
So she gotta spend a couplemonths there and just meet the
people.
And they went to some villagesand she came back with this
saying that this out of couldonly come from an African
village, which is this womansaid to her, oh, well here, we
have a saying, which is you runto the roar.
Alex Benay (27:00):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (27:01):
You know, go where the danger is.
Go to the hardest place.
Alex Benay (27:04):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (27:04):
That's where you're useful.
That's where you can actually dosomething.
And I love that that's themindset here, which is, yeah,
there's these big, messy partsthat are buried in decades old
union rules and softer decisionsand organizational decisions and
layers of admin.
If you don't unpack that, thissoftware will never work.
Right.
Alex Benay (27:20):
Yeah.
If you don't admit there's aproblem, you can't fix the
problem.
And
Paul Bellows (27:22):
yeah.
Alex Benay (27:23):
Your point on running to rewards the roar, I
remember one of the firstquestions I got was like, how
are you gonna recruit people forthis?
I can't.
We have too many people now asin we issued one competition and
I think we received 4,600resumes of people that wanted to
come and work on pay.
That was interesting'cause it'sall, I'd say grassroots,
operational level people thatwant to come and fix this
(27:43):
probably'cause they've beenimpacted themselves frankly, and
that's amazing.
You know what's interesting isin trying to find senior levels
to come here.
A lot of them are tired, right?
Covid has been hard on peopleand they did a lot in government
and Covid, it's too easy topoint to the negative, but the
civil service did great.
Then I had one senior person sayare you actually gonna fix this?
And I was like, well, what didyou think?
I'm offering you a tour of dutyto pay.
(28:05):
And then you could do your thingand leave and say you've done
some operational work on yourresume.
No, we're fixing this crap.
Like we're here to fix it.
And so you could just alreadysee the cultural differences
between somebody who's probablygone up the rank longer.
And who's used to our cultureversus the 4,600 people that are
like, yes, I'm gonna come in andfix this and roll up my sleeves.
The other culture part that'sinteresting is as we're doing
(28:26):
more agile, we're askingdirectors and managers to make
decisions on code.
Again, you just see this culturewhere we punt up decisions.
That's what we do.
We write briefing notes up toministers and prime ministers
for the last 170 years orwhatever we're at now.
I lost track.
I apologize to your listenershow old this country is.
I should probably know that.
But that's what we do, we sendit up.
(28:48):
Now we're like, no, no, no, no.
This doesn't go past a directorlevel.
You're in the room with thecoders.
You have to make a decision onthe rest of the Government of
Canada's operational sort ofneed for HR on this widget.
Sign off and they go, I can't dothat.
So that's been the other partthat's interesting.
Again, it's all culture related,right?
So it's been super fascinatingand the good news is there's no
(29:08):
shortage of people that arerunning towards the fire on this
one.
So that's been great.
Problem is probably have a lotof opinions on how to fix it,
and that's fine.
They're all welcomed.
As far as civil servants wantedto come and fix this thing, at
least at the operational level,it's been like a flood gate that
we can't, like we have, I havepeople contacting me all the
time that want to come and workhere, which is great.
Paul Bellows (29:26):
It's amazing that humans actually want good stuff.
Alex Benay (29:28):
Yeah.
Who knew?
We want nice things here.
One nice system that could payus would be great.
But yeah, a lot of work still.
Paul Bellows (29:34):
So for the Canadian who's on a boat on the
ocean out on the west coast, ina storm, the Coast Guard is
gonna get paid.
Alex Benay (29:43):
To get you.
Yes, absolutely.
Paul Bellows (29:44):
Yeah.
They're gonna get paid andthey're gonna be happy and
they're gonna come do their joband they're gonna pull you out
of the the water.
The tide needs to come.
Right.
Alex Benay (29:49):
Yeah.
It's a fundamental right, Ithink as if, as, you know, as an
employee to get paid.
So I think, in fairness, again,we managed to get people paid.
Sometimes it's taken way toolong, obviously, not sometimes,
often.
So it's this concept of, we'redoing everything we can.
We've hired more people, but allwe're doing is putting fingers
in the hole of a boat thatdoesn't have an engine.
And we're wondering why theengine's not moving forward.
(30:11):
So it's a float, it's, it'sfloating.
But it, we need to go somewherewith this thing to keep the boat
analogy going.
And so I think that's what we'vebeen able to do now is create
momentum.
Our AI engine that we softlaunch and are now testing has
been a hundred percent accuratein this calculation since day
one.
Paul Bellows (30:26):
Amazing.
Alex Benay (30:26):
And that's been done with CGI, another Canadian
company.
And they're like, this is thebiggest thing we've done on AI
globally as far as the precisionand the accuracy.
But of course it would be like,it's numbers.
It's numbers and spreadsheetsand reconciliation.
Like what?
Of course machines are gonna bebetter than humans at this at
some point, and we're alreadythere.
So that's gone well, and we'vebeen able to show that.
And now we're starting to showsome Dayforce stuff as far as
(30:48):
what the HR system's gonna looklike.
We're be in people's lobbiesover the winter with iPads and
saying, try this, try that, getsome feedback and, yeah.
I just, to me, this is thefunnest project to be on.
We're gonna change how we dothings.
Paul Bellows (31:00):
Right.
Alex Benay (31:00):
And prove that we can do it.
Anybody that I think works herehistorically or is coming here,
has a chip on their shoulder.
Paul Bellows (31:05):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (31:05):
And that's great because it's we need to prove
that we could do this.
Paul Bellows (31:09):
Sometimes you need to leverage those obstinate
parts of the human spirit to getthings done right.
Alex Benay (31:13):
Absolutely.
Paul Bellows (31:13):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (31:13):
I have zero chip on my shoulders.
I've never been accused of that.
Ever.
Paul Bellows (31:17):
No never, never.
Not at all.
Not at all.
That's not even close to yourreputation.
Alex Benay (31:20):
I'm very zen.
Very zen.
Paul Bellows (31:21):
Yeah.
Last words then.
So, you're sitting in a role,you've taken on what some said
was an impossible project.
You're getting it done andyou're achieving great things.
What's your advice to digitalleaders who are maybe a little
farther back?
What does the mindset they needto take as they step into hard
projects, things that look likethey may not be achievable, or
where the're plenty of naysayerssaying it can't be done?
How do you arm yourself forthat?
Alex Benay (31:42):
Oh my God, so much to go on.
So when you walked in, there'san, there's a poem by Edward
Guest, It Couldn't Be Done, youshould read it on the way out.
It's essentially that to kind ofignore the noise and just go on
about your business until you doit.
Listen, we have a culture herethat's quick to point out what
we can't do.
So, I would say a few things.
I'll get really personal here.
When I was 17, 18, I was playingjunior hockey and I got hit from
(32:03):
behind and I finished the gameand then my legs got all tingly
and I got to the hospital and Icouldn't walk.
I couldn't walk for six months.
I couldn't talk.
Doctors told my parents I'dnever walk again.
A whole bunch of people tellingme what I could and couldn't do.
Obviously I'm walking, I'm heretoday, but it was a long
recovery.
At 19.
I had my first child,everybody's telling me my life
(32:24):
was over and what I could orcould not do.
So for me it's like if anyonetells you, including, the
government here as an employee,what you can and cannot do.
It's your obligation tochallenge that.
The biggest risk is to keepdoing the same thing over and
over again and expecting adifferent result.
And we can be guilty of that attimes here, right?
(32:46):
Because we're just trying to getthat thing up and get it signed
and we're not actually lookingat how we're working.
Or you're gonna get a bunch ofpeople saying you can't do it.
I've just now grown up that mylimitations are not defined by
your limitations Yes.
Some people will be like, oh,you have a chip on your
shoulders, or, I think CatherineMay calls me the Disruptor In
Chief since I've been CIO.
(33:07):
I argue with that all the time.
I'm not a Disruptor In Chief.
I just do things the way they'vedone outside of Ottawa.
And I want us to, I think wedeserve nice things in Ottawa
too.
I wanna do nice things here too.
Right?
But the problem is like we haveto change how we do things.
So to me, the advice would be ifyou're working for somewhere
that's asking you to walk, likeyou talk, like you dress, like
you hang out in the same placesyou hang out with to be like
(33:28):
you, then you are have one oftwo choices.
You're either going upstream,which is exhausting, or you're
gonna comply.
But if you comply, you're notgonna get a different result
from everything that these otherpeople are doing.
We have to have diverseopinions.
We have to be able to take indifferent ideas and, and we say
we do, but then the machineryrolls over it.
(33:50):
So you gotta get back up afteryou've been rolled over and try
it again.
If you're a digital leader inany kind of organization and
you're swimming upstream, findyour allies.
I'm very fortunate I have minehere.
I have never seen, PCO, or PrivyCouncil Office for your legal
readers can listen up on whatPCO does.
We've never had a deputy clerkas involved as Chris Fox is on
this file.
And there are times where I'msending her an email, say, I
(34:11):
need help with this.
And the answer is always, yes.
I have the same at our TreasuryBoard Secretariat.
People want to fix this, so it'sgreat.
So I would say swim upstream,take your breaks, take care of
yourself, find your allies,would be another one.
And, and make sure that youactually have.
It would take a goodself-reflection.
It took me a month to decide towanna come back properly in
(34:32):
conversations with my wife onlike, this is gonna be hard.
It is gonna be hard on all ofus.
Just make sure you have yoursupport network around you
because you will go crazy,right?
'cause you're trying to changethe thing.
And I keep remembering, I thinkit's Jim Balsillie that told me,
relentless incrementalism is areal thing.
It's actually super important.
You can't boil the oceanovernight.
So just.
What are the steps you couldtake?
Right?
So every time I start a new gig,it's like, what are the three
(34:54):
things I can put in the windowquickly and say, that's what I
want.
I don't want this stuff anymore.
I want that stuff.
So find your win.
So those are two or threetidbits.
Paul Bellows (35:01):
Boiling the ocean one cup at a time.
Alex Benay (35:03):
Yeah, that's right.
Paul Bellows (35:04):
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Benay (35:04):
Who the hell wants to boil the ocean anyways.
Like I think that's getting usin trouble, right?
Paul Bellows (35:07):
It's a terrible metaphor.
Alex Benay (35:09):
Everyone's eating an elephant.
You don't eat an elephant.
Nobody eats an elephant.
Paul Bellows (35:12):
So wrap up Alex, thank you for the time here.
This was great.
I think people will reallyappreciate the human, narrative
inside of all this that reallyis changing people.
I think the one ingredient youleft out is courage.
And I think that that'simportant here to step into
something that's challenging,that's an act of courage.
So thank you for your service.
Alex Benay (35:28):
Oh, thanks.
We should thank the people thathave kept the pay system afloat
for all these years and theircourage.
And like I said, people arerunning into the fire here.
It's, it's fantastic.
It's not talked about enough,frankly.
Paul Bellows (35:38):
Here we go.
We're talking about it.
Alex Benay (35:39):
There you go.
Paul Bellows (35:40):
Thank you.
Alex Benay (35:40):
Thank you.
Paul Bellows (35:44):
Thanks so much for listening.
Alex and the many federalemployees and contractors he
works with daily are far alongon their journey to improve how
Canada pays$200 billion ofannual payroll.
I love the themes he talkedabout.
In particular (36:00):
There are no impossible problems.
We need to put these projects inperspective and break them down
to achievable tasks and actions.
Two.
Technology projects are alwayspeople and process first, when
we get the order wrong, theyoften don't deliver on their
promises.
And three.
(36:21):
Leadership in digital projectsrequires courage, effective
communication.
Humility and realism.
I hope you enjoyed myconversation with Alex.
Benay.
Please do subscribe and followthe many conversations we're
going to be releasing throughoutthis year.
I'd like to thank my colleagueswho work with me on this
project.
(36:41):
Kathy Watton is our showproducer and editor.
Frederick Brummer and AhmedKhalil created our theme music
and intro.
We're going to keep havingconversations like this.
Thanks for tuning in.
If you've got ideas for guests,we should speak to send us an
email to the311@northern.co.
The public service is about allof us.
(37:04):
And when it's done right,digital can be a key ingredient
for a better world.
This has been the 3, 1, 1podcast.
And I've been your host, PaulBellows.
This is the 3, 1, 1 podcast.
I'm your host, Paul bellows.
This is a show about the peoplethat make digital work for the
public service.
If you'd like to find out more.
Visit northern.co.
Today, my guest is Alex Benay.
Alex has recently returned tothe federal service of Canada to
(00:53):
lead the modernization ofCanada's federal payroll system.
Starting in 2009 and launchingin 2015.
The Phoenix project was meant toreplace a 40 year old technology
stack and save millions oftaxpayer dollars each year.
However, after launch it quicklybecame apparent that there were
(01:14):
major inconsistencies and gapsin paying Canada's, 290,000
federal civil servants.
The project has continued to bea black eye for the government
and costs have continued tobloom.
This is the kind of project thatmost people stay far away from.
But Alex is no stranger tocourageous initiatives.
(01:37):
As Canada's former chiefinformation officer Alex has
also held global leadershippositions with Open Text and
Microsoft.
He's known as a change maker anda disruptor.
But this initiative may well behis most significant
contribution to the effectivedelivery of government services.
As he makes clear, this issomething Canada can't fail at.
(01:59):
I think you'll appreciate Alex'srefreshingly people first take
on technology projects as wellas his fearlessness and
humility.
Here's my conversation with AlexBenay.
Alex Benay (02:13):
My name is Alex Benet.
I'm the one of the threeAssociate Deputy Ministers here
at Public Services andProcurement Canada.
Amongst a few things, my job ismainly quote unquote pay, which
turns out is more than pay.
It's HR, it's data, and it'sactually, mostly about people
and culture, good and bad.
So that's my job.
I've been in and outtagovernment my whole life.
(02:35):
Don't really agree to fitting ina box in an org structure, which
government is very good at that,but I'm not, so I need breaks.
I was the CIO of Canada, leftfor four or five years, did
Microsoft, KPMG around theworld, and then came back to
Canada.
One of the things that, throughconversations was that yeah,
they still had this Phoenixproblem and they still had other
(02:56):
problems in tech.
It's a big organization, theGovernment to Canada.
So it's normal that it has thisstuff, by the way.
Like banks are the same, theyjust don't talk about it.
But the Phoenix thing, Iactually think it's one that's
fixable.
It's just, it's gonna be a longhaul.
Payroll transformation is nevereasy.
I think for the people thatactually have suffered from
this, I came back'cause I thinkthey deserve better than that.
(03:18):
And so to me, the mission isjust the coolest ever.
But it's actually not fixingPhoenix.
It's fixing how we deliver.
And I told everybody that fromthe beginning.
This isn't about fixing Phoenix,ultimately it is.
But it has to be the use case tofix other things that create
Phoenixes for us.
Paul Bellows (03:33):
Yeah.
How do we not get to the nextPhoenix?
So I wanted to get to two thingsthat you said.
So first I love that youcompared it to a bank because we
all pay user fees to a bank.
They're taking our money andthey're running bad technology
projects and good technologyprojects.
Federal government also takessome of our, the public's,
money.
Alex Benay (03:49):
They do.
Paul Bellows (03:49):
It does bad and good technology projects.
One of them hits the media a lotmore though.
I'm gonna imagine that there'ssomeone listening to this who we
talked about Phoenix, andthey're like, what?
The, the bird, in Harry Potter?
What are we talking about?
Phoenix is the codename, theinternal project name for a
payroll transformation project.
What's the actual nature of theproject?
What's happening inside it?
Why is this hard?
Alex Benay (04:09):
Yeah.
The initial goal was toconsolidate and reduce the
amount of compensation advisorsin the Government of Canada down
to about 500, by introducingthis great new software back in
2016, 2017.
We code named Phoenix, which forany of the technologists that
will listen to your podcast, youshould never name a tech project
Phoenix.
I keep reminding people of that.
Paul Bellows (04:28):
Something that burns down on a regular basis.
Alex Benay (04:30):
Yeah.
In our case, hasn't gotten backup very easily, so don't tempt
fate.
Things went awfully wrong, likebasically everything you could
do from a leadership perspectivefailed.
We tried to harvest savingsbefore proving the technology
work.
We didn't transfer clean data.
We didn't do enough testing.
There's enough audit reports.
Anybody who wants to dive intoPhoenix will find the Auditor
(04:51):
General's reports, Goss Gilroyis another good one that people
should probably read if they'reinterested in diving into this.
But essentially everything wecould have done wrong, we did
wrong.
And for the last eight years,seven years, we've been kind of
trying to make things worse,work as best we can.
It's easy to ridicule it, it'seasy to point the finger at
another big government failure.
But I have to say like thethousands of people that we've
(05:12):
hired that actually slave awayat this thing, are using
probably one of the worsttechnology deployments that you
can think of and are stillmanaging to pay.
Like last year we paid 13.1million, had 13.1 million
transactions or payroll go well,but you're not gonna talk about
that.
You're gonna talk about theother ones that didn't go well.
But the other side of theproblem is there's about 1.6
(05:34):
million of those transactionsthat require manual
interventions because the systemis bad or because we thought
that through goodwilldepartments would send us data
on time and clean.
We know that there's no amountof goodwill that buys you clean
data and good processstandardization.
So that's what we deal with on adaily basis.
Now we have about 30 HR systems,it's gone down over the years,
(05:56):
that is feeding one pay system.
And people can send us what theywant, however they want at the
time they want, they try not to,but they always do.
And then we have to clean upthat stuff and then turn it into
a payment, right?
So it's just, the problem isbecause of the scale.
If you don't address the issuesquickly, it just magnifies.
And so it's been magnified andincreasing over the last seven
(06:17):
years.
Now there's a solution andthere's a way off of that, we
could talk about that.
But it, frankly, it took us along time to get to a point
where we admitted it was afailure in the first place.
And that's probably the biggest,if you can't admit it's a
problem, you can't fix theproblem.
We just wanted to try to fix itso badly that, you know, we just
couldn't admit that it gets to apoint where you have to be able
to say, this isn't gonna work.
(06:39):
And we've been able to do thatin the last 18 months, and as a
result, I think there's beensome pretty good progress.
Paul Bellows (06:43):
So I think root cause analysis is the core tech
skill that you need, and whenyou don't have root cause
analysis, when you don't knowwhat's actually wrong, you can
never fix a problem.
But you talked a little bitabout scale, and I'm curious,
can you just quantify a littlebit, some folks will think, oh,
the Federal Government ofCanada, Canada's not necessarily
that big a place, but ourGovernment is a little bit of
everything, right?
Like we're everything from parkrangers to folks in offices here
(07:05):
in Ottawa.
Alex Benay (07:05):
Teachers, administrative workers,
correctional officers
Paul Bellows (07:08):
yeah.
Alex Benay (07:08):
Border guard agents, military personnel, you name it.
So, it varies, let's say roughly400,000 different federal
employees, give or take, at themoment.
And dozens upon dozens anddozens of different departments
who all think they have to do HRslightly differently and
therefore try to.
Square, multiple square pegmeets one round hole is sort of
the nature of it.
(07:29):
So yeah, the scale is quitelarge, at least by Canadian
standards, but probably by anystandard, frankly, when you get
to this amount of scale.
It is quite big and it is quitediverse.
And it is complex.
So it's not to make excuses,it's just that's the nature of
the beast.
Paul Bellows (07:42):
Complexity, I think, is a really important
word.
There's the Cynefin model ofproblem definition and I love
Jim Snow's definition of that,which is: complexity is, no one
person can do this on his own,and there is no existing
solution we can take off theshelf for making something
that's novel.
And when you have those twoconditions, that's how he
defines complexity.
Alex Benay (07:59):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (07:59):
Which seems to be playing here.
You talked about 30 differentpayroll systems, all getting
unified into one piece ofsoftware.
And these payroll systems havebeen configured and changed and
improved with all kinds ofregional, and we have multiple
languages here in Canada andvery diverse regions, who
probably don't ever talk to eachother.
So I would imagine you'rewalking into, essentially 30
(08:19):
pieces of completely bespoke,unique software that have been
around for decades.
Am I right with that?
Alex Benay (08:24):
Yes and no.
They're all very different,right?
One organization will use SAP,another organization will use
Oracle.
This other organization will useOracle, but slightly different
than this organization.
They're on different versions,so at least they're not
completely bespoke on the HRside.
Paul Bellows (08:38):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (08:38):
The challenge I think with Phoenix is mostly a
cultural one.
We have a culture that maybeveers on the entitlement a
little bit too much.
And what I mean by that is,well, we're so different, right?
That we have to have this thingdifferent because it works for
us.
Paul Bellows (08:52):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (08:53):
But it doesn't work for the end user, which is the
civil servant who's not gettingpaid.
Paul Bellows (08:56):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (08:57):
Because if we all agree that that's the real
mission and that's the realgoal, so whether you work in hr,
compensation or other places, wewould just probably willingly
all do the same thing easily inorder to pay the end user, which
is the person not getting paid.
That hasn't happened yet.
The good news is I think we'vegot enough alignment now between
all of our central agencies andour senior leadership to say
enough.
(09:17):
If you're gonna be different,you better be really different.
So I'll give you an example.
The Canadian Coast Guard,everybody's heard about how
different and complex they are.
The Canadian Coast Guard is nodifferent than a grocery store
because the system doesn't carethat you are in a Coast Guard or
in a grocery store.
So when I hear things like, wehave these 10 or 15 minute
acting rules that are reallyhard to calculate, and we have
(09:39):
all these different unions.
Okay, a large grocery chain inCanada, the clerks at the cash,
which was my son for a while,wants to go out on a Friday with
friends and it's Fridayafternoon and changes his shift
at last second, they still gotpaid on time and accurately.
One of the large chains hasover, I think, four dozen unions
in Quebec only in one province.
(10:00):
So we have to stop saying thatwe're so different and that we
can't actually take a piece ofsoftware and change what we do,
'cause otherwise that's wherethe entitlement comes in.
And do what the rest of theworld does, which is use the
software the way it wasdesigned.
Because at the end of the day,like hiring is, hiring is,
hiring, right?
So an easy example for that iswe've put some unified actions
(10:22):
for pay in place of late to tryto bring the town, quote
unquote, on the same page, andit's you will not hire on any
other day except Thursday afterpay.
It's no different than when Istarted at Microsoft.
It's no different, back in thetwo thousands and nineties when
I was at OpenText, you get hiredthe day after pay.
Why?
So you don't mess up thepayroll.
Like it's pretty simple.
(10:43):
Yet we hire whenever we wantbecause our things are so
urgent.
So it just gets back to thecultural entitlement that we
have.
We have to stop that.
Because there's outcomes thatare more important than what,
how different we think we are.
Paul Bellows (10:55):
So changing culture, I love this'cause,
often we look at technology as,it's just code.
Alex Benay (10:59):
Yeah.
This isn't a tech project.
Paul Bellows (11:01):
No, it's a cultural project, right.
Alex Benay (11:02):
It's a hundred percent a culture project.
Paul Bellows (11:03):
So you get brought back into the federal government
of Canada, you've gone out toMicrosoft and you've seen that
the unique private sectordysfunctions that exist,
Alex Benay (11:11):
Everybody thinks it's public sector that's
dysfunctional.
Paul Bellows (11:13):
No, it's everywhere.
It's everywhere.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's not better, I'm like, whopays Microsoft?
Right?
Alex Benay (11:17):
And for the record on your podcast, any other
private company not picking onMicrosoft.
Paul Bellows (11:20):
No, exactly.
Any private company including myown.
So when you get into a culturechange project and you start to
identify, this code can befixed, there are rules that
exist here that can be codified.
And turned into code,requirements and code, and this
can be built and scaled, butfirst we have to change culture.
So first of all, sitting in atech seat, how do you start to
change culture?
(11:40):
What is your mindset about that?
How do you approach thatproblem?
Alex Benay (11:43):
Yeah, that's a great question.
One of the reasons I, I didn't,I didn't burn out last time.
I was CIO of Canada, but I gottired at some point, was because
like everybody's like, well, youhave to change the culture of IT
and Government.
And I was like, okay, all right.
I'm gonna change the culture ofgovernment, brand new job.
Let's go, rah rah.
Paul Bellows (11:57):
Because it's culture that needs to change,
not the whole rest of theorganization.
Alex Benay (12:00):
Exactly.
And then I started realizing,wait a minute.
Like these things are alldesigned through different
mechanisms that are way upstreamfrom anything I can control.
So now I have to change theculture of government, and then
I was like, they have like 150year head start on me.
Paul Bellows (12:11):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (12:12):
And we do things the way we do'em.
I'm not gonna say for a reason,but sometimes through
inheritance and it's not easy tochange.
So in the case of the projecthere, what was appealing to me
was like, okay, this issomething I can, to an extent
wrap my arms around a bit more.
'cause it's more precise.
Paul Bellows (12:28):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (12:28):
Okay.
So problem one.
How do you wrap your arms aroundit?
So the good news is I mentionedalignment earlier.
I don't think that the head ofHR's office, a Treasury Board
secretary, which is thedepartment that takes care of
all of our administrativepolicies and central directions
and strategies, and ourdepartment on the execution
level has ever been morealigned.
So there is no daylight betweenthe two organizations when
(12:51):
they're in negotiating thingsfor new employment terms, we're
at the table.
When we can't jam any morechanges in our schedule, we're
asking them to prioritize.
That's never existed before.
So step one is like get theownership of the business and
sort of the technology people inthe room together.
And it sounds simple, but wedon't do that.
We don't throw people in a roommultidisciplinary-aly, sort of
(13:12):
thinking together and then say,you're not walking out.
Here's a pizza box, a deodorantand a toothbrush.
The door's locked.
I'm sure that violates a lot ofcollective agreements and human
rights, so probably can't dothat.
But it should be that draconian,right?
This is a massive problem.
Fix it We were able to startdoing that.
So that's thing one.
Then we got more of the centralagencies on board, or with
(13:33):
whoever controls the money orPrime Minister's office through
our privy council office.
Everybody's on the same pagenow.
So that was step one, I think.
Step two is like the extendedgroup of people that you can, at
a senior leadership, becauseultimately this has been a
senior leadership failure.
This has been an inability topivot.
Because we don't have enoughpeople that have diverse
experience sets we were not ablefor seven years to come up with
(13:54):
different solutions.
People realize that now.
Okay, great, so now we can fixit.
So, but like having those firstconversations are hard.
I remember starting off saying,this is a culture project, not
an IT one.
Our culture needs to change.
Everybody's looking at me like,heck no, our culture's great.
I was like, well, let's see.
So you start throwing things outas a test and then you start
adjusting.
And then the other part, I'd saythe third part of that equation
(14:17):
is once you've got everybody,sort of, on the same page, you
have to be radically transparentabout what you're doing.
And that as well has been ashift.
We now have a program in placecalled Transparency by Design,
which is like most of thedocuments we produce are
available to the public.
We started releasing those.
So available now I think is themonth of June, meeting minutes
of Deputy Ministers or Recordsof Decisions architecture, third
(14:39):
party reviews.
It has to be made public likethis, this blunder of ours is
costing Canadians.
We have to make thistransparent.
We have to show that we can makea little bit of progress and
gain a little bit of trust inthe process, even if it is
incremental.
And frankly, I'd rather beincremental than Big Bang'cause
we know the cost of that.
So getting the business and thetech together, getting the
(15:00):
culture decision nailed downwith some of the senior managers
in town, and then putting theplan in place and being
radically transparent about it.
We meet with media once aquarter, meet with all staff
once a quarter, all governmentstaff, encouraging our own staff
to talk about their stories.
That's next.
Keep us honest and here's wherewe're messing up and here's
where we're doing well I thinkthrough that.
(15:21):
you'll at least be able tocreate momentum.
Change culture, I don't know.
Paul Bellows (15:24):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (15:25):
But create momentum.
I think so.
Paul Bellows (15:27):
One other framing of culture that I like, that
I've inherited, this is not inmy creation, culture is what
someone, what a person in theorganization believes is
possible and necessary.
Those two river banks and thenlike culture is all the stuff
you do in the middle of thosetwo river banks.
What is something that youbelieve should be, or that you
wish to be possible here in thefederal service around a project
(15:48):
like this that maybe let's say10 years ago, when we started
down this road wasn't possiblefor an individual.
Alex Benay (15:54):
I'll just pause culture for a second.
Paul Bellows (15:56):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (15:56):
Go back to the tech part.
I remember when this thing cameout, we have 80,000 rules and I
remember being like, okay.
Well, it's not that manyactually, 80,000 rules.
To me is, like Amazon is apretty big company in like a
hundred and what, 40 countrieswith 140 sets of laws and then
policies and then unions in somecases and they still pay people.
Paul Bellows (16:14):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (16:15):
I never bought the rules excuse.
We started this project bysaying we have our current
engine that has a hard time, notjust with the amount of rules.
Sure.
'cause it's older tech.
But how we designed it andimplemented it was not good.
And then we have this new pieceof technology with Dayforce, a
Canadian provider, that is builtto withstand many, many, many
(16:36):
more rules than 88,000 withautomation with a bunch of other
stuff in there.
So to me, as we build thingsout, as we build our AI solution
for the backlog, we're showingit as we're building out
Dayforce.
We're about to show it comeDecember.
To say like it's not thatcomplicated.
Program the schedule of theofficer, the shift's officer,
and press a button on yourphone, if they have
(16:57):
connectivity, that's a differentconversation, sure.
But like it's not that hard.
So showing the thing on the techfront and how seamless it is,
creates two things on theculture front, either, holy
crap, this is gonna be great.
And we're seeing that from theend users.
We've done an engagement withabout a thousand people in a
room, like multiple rooms.
Paul Bellows (17:14):
Yeah.
And the end users are like,yeah, this is great.
But then the people that areimpacted by how the system's
gonna change their work, is theflip side of the culture, which
is this isn't gonna work.
And I can't blame them'cause wedidn't do it properly eight
years ago and we told'em eightyears ago, don't worry, you're
not gonna need as many people todo the work.
It's gonna be great.
This new ERP system's coming init's gonna do all the work for
(17:36):
you.
And guess what it's not true.
We've had to like dramaticallyincrease our compensation
advisors.
We've had people sleep undertheir, their literally their
offices over the course of therollout because just to get pay
out the door, super humaneffort.
So I don't blame them for beinghesitant and reticent about,
yeah, okay.
I've heard this song and dancebefore.
So the goal here is to show thething evolve all the time.
(17:59):
Because at some point you get toa point where if it's working
and it's demonstrable, uh,sorry, that's my French Canadian
side sticking out.
Then what are you gonna argue?
Yeah.
Alex Benay (18:07):
Because if you're still arguing, then it's you.
But we have to get to thatpoint.
We have to earn that.
And that's sort of what we'restarting to do now, is to earn
that.
I'll call it respect or trust, Iguess.
'cause we do operate in a trustdeficit.
So the tech stuff eight, 10years ago is not the same.
The ability to show it is notthe same.
Then the ability to engageonline is not the same.
So if we're not using the moderntool set and expecting that
(18:29):
we're gonna fix the problem byjust hiring more humans and
using a bad ERP system, then wedeserve failure.
So we're trying to kind of pivotthat a little bit.
Paul Bellows (18:36):
I don't wanna miss putting punctuation under the
Canadian government is usingCanadian technology for payroll
I love that.
Thank you.
That's great.
Alex Benay (18:44):
As an entrepreneur, I'm sure you appreciate that.
Paul Bellows (18:45):
Absolutely.
It's good.
Also that a Canadian company hadbuilt software that was good
enough for the federalGovernment of Canada to use.
Alex Benay (18:51):
Enough for Accenture globally to use...
Paul Bellows (18:53):
Absolutely.
Alex Benay (18:53):
in other places.
The deputy chief Human Resourcesofficer and myself just came
back from a trip to Europe tovisit all of their Europe
customers without Dayforce inthe room.
Paul Bellows (19:00):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (19:01):
And they loved them.
They absolutely love theengagement model.
Like it actually feels like it'sa Canadian company doing
Canadian engagement with theircustomers, which is kind of
cool.
Paul Bellows (19:08):
Excellent.
Alex Benay (19:08):
So they've been, they've been fantastic partners
so far.
Like, listen, the turbulence isup ahead for all of us.
We have to design and test abunch of things together and
there's some gaps on the productside, but to your point, there
would've been gaps anywhere.
Paul Bellows (19:20):
Absolutely.
Alex Benay (19:20):
But those gaps can be addressable through cloud
extensions, which they'rebuilding and they've been proven
that they can build and run, andthey've done that with us last
year.
But it feels pretty good.
And they're backed up by, twogood companies in EY and CGI and
it was all the most transparentprocurement I think I've ever
run or ever seen run globallyfor tech.
When we did this, four or fiveyears ago, it was through
bakeoffs, not binders and we'dco-designed with the suppliers
(19:44):
each round and each round weeliminated one until there was
only three, two or threestanding.
And over the course of it,Dayforce came out the winner.
Paul Bellows (19:50):
Just to pivot from culture for a little bit, to get
into the actual how we make thesausage, that, that side of
things.
Which isn't always pretty,
Alex Benay (19:55):
It's hard to make sausage.
Paul Bellows (19:57):
It absolutely it is.
I know some excellent sausagemakers back home and I
appreciate their craft.
Alex Benay (20:02):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (20:02):
So you've got multiple external vendors.
You've got, let's say a backlog,80,000 unique requirements.
You know, that's a, a bit of anoversimplification of where
we're at today.
But you're doing real time usertesting; you're getting features
in front of actual users; you'revalidating all the removing
staplers in desk now part; we'reactually gonna change people's
day-to-day, style of workingthat's happening, going to
(20:23):
managers who, this is how youwill do your job now.
Everyone loves to hear that, butall that hard work is happening.
What does the actual team instructure of the project look
like?
How are you building thesoftware?
Alex Benay (20:33):
Yeah, that's a great question.
When I first started, we had,the next gen project team, those
were the folks that were runningthe Dayforce stuff, the new
stuff.
Then we had PSPC taking care ofthe current stuff.
So thousands of compensationadvisors and hundreds of people
running the current platformwith IBM and a bunch of stuff.
(20:54):
So it is very much a mix ofpublic service employees and
private sector folks.
The first thing we did was weneed to bring all of this
together.
'cause we're not gonna do atransition by having teams on
one side, team on the otherside.
No handover.
So we put one CTO(ChiefTechnology Officer) in charge of
all the tech.
That's worked out quite well.
We've put somebody in charge ofdata and AI'cause all the third
party reports had said, youdon't do any data or AI.
(21:17):
And so we wanted to do that.
So we started by focusing onthat.
So we have one assistant deputyminister responsible for that.
We have someone in charge ofsort of our policy planning.
We do have to feed thegovernment beast.
You know, there's submissions,there's discussions, there's
policy there.
So a person in charge of that.
And then we have one person incharge of our operations, like
our heavy, heavy humanoperations, like the thousands
of compensation advisors.
So supporting us is IBM on thecurrent platform, as we all
(21:40):
know, and then a mixture ofDayforce, EY and CGI on, the new
stuff, which includes, AI in ourbacklog, for example, which has
been run by CGI project officerun by EY and Dayforce doing
their thing in the product.
So yeah, it's interestingbecause when I started the new
technology had never gone to thepay center yet, and I asked why,
and I just didn't get an answerI felt comfortable with.
(22:03):
So first thing we did was we,told the Toronto gang, you're
flying to Miramichi(NewBrunswick).
And they're like, oh, that's,it's far.
Turns out it's not easy to getto, but it was great.
And the first meeting everybody,you know, you could sell,
everybody had their sittingthere with their arms crossed,
like the language was amazing.
And we were talking aboutsprinting and agile and a bunch
of stuff that I'm sure ourprivate sector friends were used
(22:24):
to, but we certainly weren'tused to in government.
And then the second and thethird time, by the fourth or
fifth or sixth time, it startedgetting better.
So the thing is you just had toshove'em in a room together.
Now, there's still some peoplewith their arms crossed, and I
like them because, those are thepeople that once I convince them
or hopefully we do, then it'sgonna work.
Then I know, like you need thosesort of, those people that'll
(22:45):
challenge you to the very endand then say, okay, fine, I give
up.
And I want them to get to that.
I want them to say, okay, fine.
You know what, I can't think ofanything else.
Else.
So that was interestingculturally speaking, bringing
all of these groups together andI don't blame any one group over
the next, the new technologyteam had been told, oh, this is
just pie in the sky, it'll neverwork.
The current tech team were like,well, your product is horrible.
(23:07):
Everybody brings their scars tothe table.
So it's been interesting.
Now, it's one team, one projectaround town.
It's the first time I can,honestly say that the head of HR
could literally regurgitate ourproject plans.
I am not at the level where Icould step in for a head of HR.
That job is as complex or moreprobably than mine, but like
(23:29):
that alignment is there.
The culture and breaking downthe barriers is starting to come
along just within the team.
But at first it was veryinteresting.
It was very turf war.
It was very, who's right, who'swrong?
I remember asking them a fewtimes if they knew names of some
of the victims of Phoenix andnobody did.
And then I was like, this isn'tacceptable.
You can't sit here and defendturf if you don't know who's
(23:50):
been impacted.
So now what we're working oncurrently is defining our joint
mission statement.
I believe in mission overvalues.
Someone's gonna say that'sstupid, but if you believe in
the joint mission, the valueswill come.
We have public sector values andso it's not like we don't have
that stuff, but what is ouractual joint mission here?
It's been interesting to see thestaff sort of from across 6,000
(24:13):
people try to develop that.
So it's been fun.
Paul Bellows (24:15):
There's two interesting things I I wanna
call out and what you've said.
And first is you were kind ofjoking when you said, we wanna
lock people in a room with,pizza and a toothbrush.
Alex Benay (24:24):
On this podcast, I'm officially joking.
Paul Bellows (24:26):
Officially joking, but of course, as a human, you
would love the things we'd liketo do as humans versus what we
could do at our official roles.
Yeah.
What's below that though is, andyou talked about this, is
software is our organizationnow.
Alex Benay (24:37):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (24:38):
Software is the codification of the processes we
determine.
And you can't create a processthat doesn't involve software
and you can't take software thatdoesn't involve a process.
And you've built a team wherethose things have finally come
together.
Like just the fiction that youcould do one thing in one room
and the other thing in anotherroom and have it work out.
Alex Benay (24:54):
And we still do that for the record.
Paul Bellows (24:56):
Oh yeah.
Alex Benay (24:56):
We are absolutely.
I think as a project, an anomalyin the government of Canada.
I'm responsible for a coupleother projects and I'm like,
yeah, we're gonna bring users,us, like real Canadians, us, the
supplier of software in a roomtogether, and we're all gonna
sit there until, we build athing and that everybody says it
works and everybody says, ohyeah, we've done agile.
This, it's a term like, not, notjust this government here, like
(25:19):
in Ottawa, but it's, it iseverywhere in the public sector.
And it's called Agile GasLighting.
Paul Bellows (25:23):
Yes.
Alex Benay (25:24):
And it's when, people tell you they've done
agile and then you hear themtalk and they talk like they're
running a waterfall project fromthe 1990s.
We're no different than a lot ofmajor governments that way.
Paul Bellows (25:35):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (25:35):
But what we're starting to create here is, you
have to do the work different ifyou want a different outcome.
Even if you swapped out, Phoenixfor Dayforce.
If we don't do the workdifferently, it's gonna be the
same outcome, maybe a bitbetter, but it won't be the
outcome we want.
To your point about putting'emall in a room together, but
that's part of the culturechange, right?
Paul Bellows (25:52):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (25:53):
And, and the civil service, that is our federal
government.
We value very much policy peopleand communications people.
What gets us in trouble are ouroperations.
Time in, time out, all the time.
It's not policy, it's usuallynot comms.
It's our operations that get usin trouble.
But that's not what wenecessarily value.
So now what we're doing is we'reputting that on a pedestal.
(26:13):
We're saying your operationalchops are as important as the
policy people over at thecenter.
And they're working together.
It's not always easy.
We don't always agree, but justthe fact we're arguing about
something is really good.
To your point on the softwareand the codification, so it's
kind of fun to see, let's seewhere, you know, maybe we have
this conversation in a year andwe'll see if it worked.
If this project fails, it won'tbe because of Dayforce.
(26:34):
It'll be because of our culture.
Paul Bellows (26:36):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (26:36):
And that's what we have to address.
Paul Bellows (26:38):
A gift I got once is from my mom, of course, pay
attention to your mom is the keylesson here.
Alex Benay (26:43):
Mm-Hmm.
Paul Bellows (26:43):
But she got to go to Africa on a project to work.
She was doing leadershipdevelopment in an orphanage
project in Africa.
So she gotta spend a couplemonths there and just meet the
people.
And they went to some villagesand she came back with this
saying that this out of couldonly come from an African
village, which is this womansaid to her, oh, well here, we
have a saying, which is you runto the roar.
Alex Benay (27:00):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (27:01):
You know, go where the danger is.
Go to the hardest place.
Alex Benay (27:04):
Yeah.
Paul Bellows (27:04):
That's where you're useful.
That's where you can actually dosomething.
And I love that that's themindset here, which is, yeah,
there's these big, messy partsthat are buried in decades old
union rules and softer decisionsand organizational decisions and
layers of admin.
If you don't unpack that, thissoftware will never work.
Right.
Alex Benay (27:20):
Yeah.
If you don't admit there's aproblem, you can't fix the
problem.
And
Paul Bellows (27:22):
yeah.
Alex Benay (27:23):
Your point on running to rewards the roar, I
remember one of the firstquestions I got was like, how
are you gonna recruit people forthis?
I can't.
We have too many people now asin we issued one competition and
I think we received 4,600resumes of people that wanted to
come and work on pay.
That was interesting'cause it'sall, I'd say grassroots,
operational level people thatwant to come and fix this
(27:43):
probably'cause they've beenimpacted themselves frankly, and
that's amazing.
You know what's interesting isin trying to find senior levels
to come here.
A lot of them are tired, right?
Covid has been hard on peopleand they did a lot in government
and Covid, it's too easy topoint to the negative, but the
civil service did great.
Then I had one senior person sayare you actually gonna fix this?
And I was like, well, what didyou think?
I'm offering you a tour of dutyto pay.
(28:05):
And then you could do your thingand leave and say you've done
some operational work on yourresume.
No, we're fixing this crap.
Like we're here to fix it.
And so you could just alreadysee the cultural differences
between somebody who's probablygone up the rank longer.
And who's used to our cultureversus the 4,600 people that are
like, yes, I'm gonna come in andfix this and roll up my sleeves.
The other culture part that'sinteresting is as we're doing
(28:26):
more agile, we're askingdirectors and managers to make
decisions on code.
Again, you just see this culturewhere we punt up decisions.
That's what we do.
We write briefing notes up toministers and prime ministers
for the last 170 years orwhatever we're at now.
I lost track.
I apologize to your listenershow old this country is.
I should probably know that.
But that's what we do, we sendit up.
(28:48):
Now we're like, no, no, no, no.
This doesn't go past a directorlevel.
You're in the room with thecoders.
You have to make a decision onthe rest of the Government of
Canada's operational sort ofneed for HR on this widget.
Sign off and they go, I can't dothat.
So that's been the other partthat's interesting.
Again, it's all culture related,right?
So it's been super fascinatingand the good news is there's no
(29:08):
shortage of people that arerunning towards the fire on this
one.
So that's been great.
Problem is probably have a lotof opinions on how to fix it,
and that's fine.
They're all welcomed.
As far as civil servants wantedto come and fix this thing, at
least at the operational level,it's been like a flood gate that
we can't, like we have, I havepeople contacting me all the
time that want to come and workhere, which is great.
Paul Bellows (29:26):
It's amazing that humans actually want good stuff.
Alex Benay (29:28):
Yeah.
Who knew?
We want nice things here.
One nice system that could payus would be great.
But yeah, a lot of work still.
Paul Bellows (29:34):
So for the Canadian who's on a boat on the
ocean out on the west coast, ina storm, the Coast Guard is
gonna get paid.
Alex Benay (29:43):
To get you.
Yes, absolutely.
Paul Bellows (29:44):
Yeah.
They're gonna get paid andthey're gonna be happy and
they're gonna come do their joband they're gonna pull you out
of the the water.
The tide needs to come.
Right.
Alex Benay (29:49):
Yeah.
It's a fundamental right, Ithink as if, as, you know, as an
employee to get paid.
So I think, in fairness, again,we managed to get people paid.
Sometimes it's taken way toolong, obviously, not sometimes,
often.
So it's this concept of, we'redoing everything we can.
We've hired more people, but allwe're doing is putting fingers
in the hole of a boat thatdoesn't have an engine.
And we're wondering why theengine's not moving forward.
(30:11):
So it's a float, it's, it'sfloating.
But it, we need to go somewherewith this thing to keep the boat
analogy going.
And so I think that's what we'vebeen able to do now is create
momentum.
Our AI engine that we softlaunch and are now testing has
been a hundred percent accuratein this calculation since day
one.
Paul Bellows (30:26):
Amazing.
Alex Benay (30:26):
And that's been done with CGI, another Canadian
company.
And they're like, this is thebiggest thing we've done on AI
globally as far as the precisionand the accuracy.
But of course it would be like,it's numbers.
It's numbers and spreadsheetsand reconciliation.
Like what?
Of course machines are gonna bebetter than humans at this at
some point, and we're alreadythere.
So that's gone well, and we'vebeen able to show that.
And now we're starting to showsome Dayforce stuff as far as
(30:48):
what the HR system's gonna looklike.
We're be in people's lobbiesover the winter with iPads and
saying, try this, try that, getsome feedback and, yeah.
I just, to me, this is thefunnest project to be on.
We're gonna change how we dothings.
Paul Bellows (31:00):
Right.
Alex Benay (31:00):
And prove that we can do it.
Anybody that I think works herehistorically or is coming here,
has a chip on their shoulder.
Paul Bellows (31:05):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (31:05):
And that's great because it's we need to prove
that we could do this.
Paul Bellows (31:09):
Sometimes you need to leverage those obstinate
parts of the human spirit to getthings done right.
Alex Benay (31:13):
Absolutely.
Paul Bellows (31:13):
Yeah.
Alex Benay (31:13):
I have zero chip on my shoulders.
I've never been accused of that.
Ever.
Paul Bellows (31:17):
No never, never.
Not at all.
Not at all.
That's not even close to yourreputation.
Alex Benay (31:20):
I'm very zen.
Very zen.
Paul Bellows (31:21):
Yeah.
Last words then.
So, you're sitting in a role,you've taken on what some said
was an impossible project.
You're getting it done andyou're achieving great things.
What's your advice to digitalleaders who are maybe a little
farther back?
What does the mindset they needto take as they step into hard
projects, things that look likethey may not be achievable, or
where the're plenty of naysayerssaying it can't be done?
How do you arm yourself forthat?
Alex Benay (31:42):
Oh my God, so much to go on.
So when you walked in, there'san, there's a poem by Edward
Guest, It Couldn't Be Done, youshould read it on the way out.
It's essentially that to kind ofignore the noise and just go on
about your business until you doit.
Listen, we have a culture herethat's quick to point out what
we can't do.
So, I would say a few things.
I'll get really personal here.
When I was 17, 18, I was playingjunior hockey and I got hit from
(32:03):
behind and I finished the gameand then my legs got all tingly
and I got to the hospital and Icouldn't walk.
I couldn't walk for six months.
I couldn't talk.
Doctors told my parents I'dnever walk again.
A whole bunch of people tellingme what I could and couldn't do.
Obviously I'm walking, I'm heretoday, but it was a long
recovery.
At 19.
I had my first child,everybody's telling me my life
(32:24):
was over and what I could orcould not do.
So for me it's like if anyonetells you, including, the
government here as an employee,what you can and cannot do.
It's your obligation tochallenge that.
The biggest risk is to keepdoing the same thing over and
over again and expecting adifferent result.
And we can be guilty of that attimes here, right?
(32:46):
Because we're just trying to getthat thing up and get it signed
and we're not actually lookingat how we're working.
Or you're gonna get a bunch ofpeople saying you can't do it.
I've just now grown up that mylimitations are not defined by
your limitations Yes.
Some people will be like, oh,you have a chip on your
shoulders, or, I think CatherineMay calls me the Disruptor In
Chief since I've been CIO.
(33:07):
I argue with that all the time.
I'm not a Disruptor In Chief.
I just do things the way they'vedone outside of Ottawa.
And I want us to, I think wedeserve nice things in Ottawa
too.
I wanna do nice things here too.
Right?
But the problem is like we haveto change how we do things.
So to me, the advice would be ifyou're working for somewhere
that's asking you to walk, likeyou talk, like you dress, like
you hang out in the same placesyou hang out with to be like
(33:28):
you, then you are have one oftwo choices.
You're either going upstream,which is exhausting, or you're
gonna comply.
But if you comply, you're notgonna get a different result
from everything that these otherpeople are doing.
We have to have diverseopinions.
We have to be able to take indifferent ideas and, and we say
we do, but then the machineryrolls over it.
(33:50):
So you gotta get back up afteryou've been rolled over and try
it again.
If you're a digital leader inany kind of organization and
you're swimming upstream, findyour allies.
I'm very fortunate I have minehere.
I have never seen, PCO, or PrivyCouncil Office for your legal
readers can listen up on whatPCO does.
We've never had a deputy clerkas involved as Chris Fox is on
this file.
And there are times where I'msending her an email, say, I
(34:11):
need help with this.
And the answer is always, yes.
I have the same at our TreasuryBoard Secretariat.
People want to fix this, so it'sgreat.
So I would say swim upstream,take your breaks, take care of
yourself, find your allies,would be another one.
And, and make sure that youactually have.
It would take a goodself-reflection.
It took me a month to decide towanna come back properly in
(34:32):
conversations with my wife onlike, this is gonna be hard.
It is gonna be hard on all ofus.
Just make sure you have yoursupport network around you
because you will go crazy,right?
'cause you're trying to changethe thing.
And I keep remembering, I thinkit's Jim Balsillie that told me,
relentless incrementalism is areal thing.
It's actually super important.
You can't boil the oceanovernight.
So just.
What are the steps you couldtake?
Right?
So every time I start a new gig,it's like, what are the three
(34:54):
things I can put in the windowquickly and say, that's what I
want.
I don't want this stuff anymore.
I want that stuff.
So find your win.
So those are two or threetidbits.
Paul Bellows (35:01):
Boiling the ocean one cup at a time.
Alex Benay (35:03):
Yeah, that's right.
Paul Bellows (35:04):
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Benay (35:04):
Who the hell wants to boil the ocean anyways.
Like I think that's getting usin trouble, right?
Paul Bellows (35:07):
It's a terrible metaphor.
Alex Benay (35:09):
Everyone's eating an elephant.
You don't eat an elephant.
Nobody eats an elephant.
Paul Bellows (35:12):
So wrap up Alex, thank you for the time here.
This was great.
I think people will reallyappreciate the human, narrative
inside of all this that reallyis changing people.
I think the one ingredient youleft out is courage.
And I think that that'simportant here to step into
something that's challenging,that's an act of courage.
So thank you for your service.
Alex Benay (35:28):
Oh, thanks.
We should thank the people thathave kept the pay system afloat
for all these years and theircourage.
And like I said, people arerunning into the fire here.
It's, it's fantastic.
It's not talked about enough,frankly.
Paul Bellows (35:38):
Here we go.
We're talking about it.
Alex Benay (35:39):
There you go.
Paul Bellows (35:40):
Thank you.
Alex Benay (35:40):
Thank you.
Paul Bellows (35:44):
Thanks so much for listening.
Alex and the many federalemployees and contractors he
works with daily are far alongon their journey to improve how
Canada pays$200 billion ofannual payroll.
I love the themes he talkedabout.
In particular (36:00):
There are no impossible problems.
We need to put these projects inperspective and break them down
to achievable tasks and actions.
Two.
Technology projects are alwayspeople and process first, when
we get the order wrong, theyoften don't deliver on their
promises.
And three.
(36:21):
Leadership in digital projectsrequires courage, effective
communication.
Humility and realism.
I hope you enjoyed myconversation with Alex.
Benay.
Please do subscribe and followthe many conversations we're
going to be releasing throughoutthis year.
I'd like to thank my colleagueswho work with me on this
project.
(36:41):
Kathy Watton is our showproducer and editor.
Frederick Brummer and AhmedKhalil created our theme music
and intro.
We're going to keep havingconversations like this.
Thanks for tuning in.
If you've got ideas for guests,we should speak to send us an
email to the311@northern.co.
The public service is about allof us.
(37:04):
And when it's done right,digital can be a key ingredient
for a better world.
This has been the 3, 1, 1podcast.
And I've been your host, PaulBellows.
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