PORTFOLIO

Military Personnel Lifecycle Management: The comprehensive, integrated and configurable provision of personnel support functions for the professional military individual, organisation and community.

Overview
There are clear pressures on the people and IT systems that support the military personnel function, specifically systems that help recruit, train, pay, administer, manage careers and personnel records for the military community, including cadets, veterans and reservists. Given these pressures, the quality of the personnel IT support systems will increasingly affect the outcome of future operations. If the right people with the right skills in the right numbers to build, deploy, operate and maintain military capability are not available then the mission and consequently government policy, will be compromised. Broad pressures include:

• Economic: governments demanding more for less dictates better recruiting and training, with longer service retention, often using fewer assets and reduced overheads.
• Military doctrine: adapting to emerging global environments with balanced multi-capable forces for all situations, whilst fulfilling current government requirements, means longer operational deployments with less clearly defined success and operating boundaries.
• Social and education: public expectations are increasing in terms of immediacy, rights and reward. Additionally demographic trends combine to squeeze recruiting and retention. The standard of education of recruits is struggling to keep pace with technological advance and the demands of training.
• Legislative: the Armed Forces are under pressure to comply with a host of legislative and policy directives associated with rights of the individual.

The logical response to such pressures is to chase out duplication and reduce overheads whilst seeking to provide a more cohesive and integrated support solution. The UK Armed Services are adopting a tri-Service approach, where appropriate, in the recruiting, training and personnel administration IT functions. The first step, the forming of the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency (AFPAA), by coalescing all the Service personnel back office operations and partnering with EDS Defence for technical and support services; was followed by undertaking a business transformation for the Regular and Auxiliary Forces known as the Joint Personnel Administration(JPA); and most recently the merger of the Veterans Agency with AFPAA to form the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA).

The JPA project is a significant initiative of immense proportions affecting all military personnel in the UK; and being watched keenly by many nations. It has required a radical rationalisation of policies and procedures in order for systems to be configured by EDS Defence. JPA utilises the principles of self-service and workflow and as such the training and change management aspects have needed to be comprehensive. Phased rollout commenced in March 2006 to the RAF, continued with the Royal Navy in the Autumn of 2006 and concluded with the Army in the Spring of 2007.

EDS Defence also provide the recruiting system to the three Services and a comprehensive training support system to the British Army, Royal Marines and Royal Navy, both of which interface to JPA. The company has used its partnership experience to develop an approach and toolset which addresses the needs of the current and emerging military environments. This is known as Military Personnel Lifecycle Management (MPLM).

Case Study: EDS supporting Military Personnel in the United Kingdom
For the past decade EDS have provided a managed service in support of the UK Armed Forces

Comprehensive Recruiting and Training Support Systems
Over the last ten years EDS has provided a managed service in support of officer and enlisted personnel recruitment to the UK Armed Services. This service encompasses all 160 recruiting offices throughout the country, linking staff in those offices with establishments such as Headquarters and selection centres. The service includes provision of hardware and local networks. It enables information on potential recruits to be recorded and supports the recruiter in nurturing, recruiting and contracting the individual by detailing job vacancies throughout the military in terms of cap-badge, department and trade. The recruiting function enables the British Armed Forces to recruit the right individual to be trained in the appropriate expertise in the shortest timeframe. The recruiting function interacts with the training support function to ensure that individuals spend the least time inactive before starting training.

EDS also provide a managed service to support the British Army and Royal Navy in ensuring a cohesive training regime. EDS are contracted by the Army and Royal Navy to provide the functionality to plan, track and control the pipeline of trainees both for those just joining the military and those undergoing further professional development. EDS were contracted in 1995 to build a comprehensive training support system. The TAFMIS application was subsequently developed allowing courses to be designed, delivered and validated in line with the Defence Systems approach to Training. The system not only manages the courses but also enables users to manage resources, such as instructors and classrooms, and to obtain best fit by using the scheduling capability of the system.

Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA)
In November 1997 EDS were contracted by MOD to partner the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency (AFPAA) (in April 2007 AFPAA merged with the Veterans Agency to become SPVA) as the technology and business process providers of personnel administration. This includes accepting relevant data from units, updating the Record of Service and, from those records calculating all pay and allowances and making payment of these to individual accounts through the Bank Automated Clearing System (BACS). This service is provided for all three Services (Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force) and includes the settlement of individual monthly tax payments to the Inland Revenue and notification to individuals.

As part of its managed services to SPVA, in addition to personnel administration EDS also provides support to medical and dental systems for the Armed Forces, and manages a substantial proportion of the RAF's IT infrastructure. The managed services also include the provision of an ID card system for the entire Armed Forces of the UK. SPVA with EDS provides administrative support for the pensions process towards the end of an individual's service. It assists in providing forecasts of pension benefit for the individual and, at the end of service, assesses the pension to which an individual is entitled.

Since the initial contract award, EDS has administered and maintained millions of live pay, master personnel and pension records and managed thousands of desktops. Thanks to our cooperative efforts, in the first three years of the relationship the Agency enjoyed increased efficiencies and a significant 30 percent reduction in costs.

Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) Project
In 2001, the MOD amended the original AFPAA contract to promote a stronger partnership and more closely align business interests. For example, EDS added a risk-sharing arrangement and performance incentives and put more effective dispute resolution measures in place. In addition the new agreement, with a further amendment in 2004, enabled implementation of the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) initiative - a solution based on Oracle HRMS that incorporated converged tri-service working practices supported by a new Compensation and Pension System and minor applications to perform tasks not covered by the core systems.

JPA's implementation brought with it many challenges. Beyond needing to develop and consolidate systems and harmonise disparate business processes, EDS also trained and redeployed a sizable number of staff and effectively managed change. To that end, EDS established a dedicated human resources account team to ensure regular contact with the MoD's HR team, Trade Unions and EDS employees. Although time scales were tight, EDS took a measured, evolutionary approach to help MOD meet its prime objective of maintaining existing service levels with minimal disruption as the new solution was phased in.

The strengthened partnering arrangement between EDS and the MoD underpinned our approach to the significant change programme. EDS' proven track record within the Agency and its expertise in integrating IT solutions and administrative processes - combined with a detailed understanding of Services' personnel administration needs - made this challenging and exciting programme possible. In succeeding, EDS worked closely and cooperatively with the MOD to develop an empathetic awareness and understanding of the business requirements.

While development of the JPA system was under way, EDS rationalised certain pay and personnel administration processes to prepare for the new system's implementation. For example, EDS co-located the tri-service pensions administration at one location (Glasgow, UK); consolidated ID card production at another site (Gosport, UK); and established a new Enquiry Centre with staff based across the two sites interconnected by a new telephony system that allowed automatic routing of calls to the next available agent.

Enterprisewide Personnel Administration System
EDS is progressively modernising and technically refreshing the infrastructure to reduce its complexity and operating costs. At the same time, EDS is maintaining interfaces to the MoD's secure wide area networks to ensure quality service delivery. EDS has phased out most of the legacy applications with implementation of the new enterprisewide personnel administration system. The benefits of the robust, centralised solution are many. For example, SPVA have been able to reduce operational and labour expenses, improve data accuracy and personnel tracking and provide self-service capabilities to Service members, dependents and retirees.

The new system was rolled out to the Armed Forces in phases. This started in April 2006 with the RAF and followed by the Royal Navy at the end of 2006 and the Army in 2007. The new system is providing a modern HR and Payroll system with significant additional functionality, it is estimated it will provide savings to the MOD of around £100 million per annum.

Key to the contract's future success is the continued mutual commitment to achieving organizational objectives and priorities as one team working in partnership.