30,000 federal employees will begin testing new pay system next summer

Federal government moving ahead with new pay system to replace Phoenix

Starting next summer, some federal government workers will no longer have to deal with the much-maligned Phoenix pay system as the government looks to roll out their new pay system.

According to the government, 30,000 federal public service workers from two departments and one agency will be part of a testing phase for the government’s new Dayforce human resources and payroll system next year.

Alex Benay, Associate Deputy Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada, says the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Shared Services Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada will begin onboarding the new system in May of 2026, and the government will begin testing in June of that year.

The government plans to test the new system in parallel to the old one to ensure accuracy prior to full deployment.

“We will be ready to launch parallel payroll testing as of June 2026, our vanguard departments have worked diligently to get their data ready, and the Dayforce system will begin to be onboarded for those first three departments as of late May 2026,” Benay said in a press conference on Wednesday.

“We’re halfway done configuring Dayforce, and we’re also at a point where we’ve integrated data for our pilot departments of Shared Services Canada and Public Services and Procurement.”

Benay says the data integration of Dayforce is a “huge step up” as the government did no data testing with the Phoenix pay system.

“The data readiness is what’s going to enable parallel testing and ensure that Dayforce works from day one, and we’re making sure that we also avoid Phoenix failures of the past,” Benay said.

According to Benay, the government is also moving to standardize human resources across the government to help with the transition to the new pay system.

“HR standardization work is paramount, if you recall this was another major failure point of the previous system when launching Phoenix, and we’re gradually decomplexifying our HR environment,” Benay said.

“Pay accuracy today, sits at 98.4 per cent, an increase from our last reporting period, but many remaining errors stem from delayed or incorrect HR actions, its not necessarily always the pay systems fault.”

The government has been using an AI tool to help settle a backlog of outstanding pay transactions. Benay says he anticipates the AI tool will have processed 135,000 cases by December.

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