A by-the-numbers look at the auditor general’s report on the Phoenix pay system

OTTAWA – Auditor general Michael Ferguson has taken his first close look at the federal government’s problem-plagued pay system known as Phoenix. Here are some numbers from the report:

290,000: Federal employees the government has to pay regularly.

$22 billion: Annual payroll for the federal government.

80,000: Different pay rules that guide those payments.

200: Custom additions to Phoenix to handle those 80,000 rules.

494,500: Outstanding pay issues that needed to be resolved at the end of June.

150,000: Public servants who had an outstanding pay issue at the end of June.

$520 million: Total value of the pay issues that needed to be resolved at the end of June.

$540 million: Estimated spending over three years to fix Phoenix, a number Ferguson said he expects the government to blow past.

$1.2 billion: Cost over seven years it took an Australian government agency to resolve a similar pay system problem, an example Ferguson cites specifically in his report as an example of where Canada could end up.

62: Percentage of public servants who were paid incorrectly at least once during the last fiscal year, ending in March.