[LINK] Project Management at UK Ministry of Defence
Tom Worthington
Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au
Wed Mar 7 09:05:24 AEDT 2007
Graham Lay presented on "Joint Personnel Administration (JPA)
Initiative - Case Study" at the Australian Institute of Project
Management (<http://www.aipm.com.au/>AIPM) Canberra Chapter, 28
February 2007. Graham is Managing Director of EDS Defence U.K. EDS
won a contract to redevelop the UK MoD's personnel and pay system.
EDS arranged to install Oracle's personnel package for the $4B
project. But Graham emphasized that a military personnel has to
handle complexities unknown to a civilian system, such as issuing
medals. Pay is very important to military personnel, who will not
perform at their best in a remote and dangerous environment if
worrying that their families have no money or their car has been
repossessed back in the UK because they were not paid on time.
... EDS will implement a Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system
for AFPAA which will deliver GBP600 million savings to the MoD over
10 years. The JPA implementation - rolling out across the RAF, RN and
Army in turn between 2006 and 2007 - will modernise and harmonise
what are at present multiple standalone systems. This implementation
is consistent with the terms of the service delivery contract awarded
to EDS in Nov 1997 and which runs to November 2009. ...
From: <http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=133152>EDS
Strikes Strategic Partnership With Ministry of Defence to Deliver
Joint Personnel Administration System for UK Armed Forcese, News
Release, EDS 28 October 2004
Graham emphasized that while the IT aspects of the project were
challenging, the major problems were with organizational change and
staff motivation. The system's aim had to be seem by the military as
aiding their mission of defending the country, rather than just
saving some money for the Treasury. The rivallray of the army, navy
and air force had to be overcome to unify the pay and conditions of
the tree services so a single simplified system could be used.
Graham explained it was not all without problems. As an example
personnel were told to log in to the new system to change their
password after a particular time. In the civilian environment, staff
could be expected to do that throughout the day. But military people
are trained to carry out tasks precisely at a specified time. So all
the personnel tried to log on at the specified time, causing a system
overload.
The RAF has declared it will have its stalled human resources
computer systems fully operational by the end of the week, seven
weeks after it went live.
But the MOD still has to determine what the problem was before it can
guarantee that the Joint Personnel Administration system (JPA) can be
rolled out on schedule to the Army and Navy later this year. ...
From: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/11/raf_hr_fix/>EDS's Air
Force system should fly by 'weekend', Mark Ballard , 11th May 2006
Graham is in Australia to talk to the Australian Defence Department
about systems. One of my first jobs on joining
<http://www.tomw.net.au/nt/tt97.html>Australian Defence Force HQ in
Canberra was to help review the personnel system then in development.
My report was not favorable a the project was canceled. The
replacement project started out well, but was then canceled after a
few years. After I left Defence they had more success adapting an
off-the-shelf package, much as Graham recounted for the UK.
More in the blog version of this at
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/03/project-management-at-uk-ministry-of.html>.
Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617 http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml
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