Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) is the intranet-based

personnel Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any ot ...

administration system used by the

British Armed Forces The British Armed Forces, also known as His Majesty's Armed Forces, are the military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies. They also promote the UK's wider interests, ...

from April 2006 onwards, replacing the separate payment and administration teams from each of the three Services. Despite the ability to carry out over 40 formerly paper-based functions, from checking postings to payslips, the system has been heavily criticised.

Creation

JPA was created by Electronic Data Systems in partnership with the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in state ...

at an estimated cost of £269 million. It is believed that JPA will save the MoD in excess of £100 million per year.

Design

The system was designed around an

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Commercial off-the-shelf Commercial off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...

package, with an Oracle database as the back-end structure. JPA has essentially two parts: an ''online'' and an ''offline (deployed)'' application. The online application communicates directly with the main servers over the Restricted

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

Interconnect (RLI) (usually using the DII network, although JPA is also accessible via TAFMIS and other legacy systems) on a client-server basis. However, if communications are not stable enough for this configuration, the system can be used "in theatre" with a limited connection in offline mode with a local server recording all database updates/deletes/inserts. Once communications are restored, a synchronisation process amalgamates the changes held locally into the remote master server in the United Kingdom.

Implementation

JPA was rolled out to each of the three armed forces at separate, phased dates. The

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

came first, on 1 April 2006. This was both on time and on budget. The

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

followed in November 2006 with the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gur ...

, most difficult of the three Services in terms of complexity of administration, completing the rollout in June 2007. JPA is maintained by a core team of analyst developers in the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA), formerly the

Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency The Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency (AFPAA) was a UK Ministry of Defence Tri-Service Defence Agency from April 1997 until it was merged into the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency on 2 April 2007. Its role was to provide a full r ...

(AFPAA).

Statistics

Administers more than 340,000 live pay records.
Maintains over 570,000 master personnel records.
Maintains more than 725,000 pension records.
Accounts for £5.7 billion in military pay and allowances.
Provides IT services and supports over 8,000 desktop PCs worldwide.

Criticism and problems

From the rollout of JPA problems with pay have been well publicised. Teething problems upon rollout include users not being able to log onto the system due to high server demands, and others not receiving the correct pay or allowances. The rollout also came at the same time as the

War on terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...

, which saw headlines such as "Anger As Our Boys Go Unpaid". In February 2008 an RAF officer successfully sued the MoD for shortfalls in his pay packet as a result of JPA. Later in 2008, the then Chief of the Defence Staff

General A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". O ...

David Richards raised his concerns over the "prevalence of fraudulent behaviour" on the system.

References

{{reflist Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) Human resource management software