By David Williams
MPs have condemned the Ministry of Defence’s botched attempt to improve its payroll system.
MPs have condemned the Ministry of Defence’s botched attempt to improve its payroll system.Errors in the Joint Personnel Administration system were ‘reprehensible’ and caused the department’s accounts to be qualified by the National Audit Office, the Commons’ defence select committee said.
Reviewing the department’s annual report and accounts for 2007/08, the committee concluded: ‘It is difficult to exaggerate the magnitude of the failure of the JPA programme.’
Installation of the JPA was completed in 2007, at a cost of £244m.
The system was intended to save £100m per year, cutting 1,400 backroom jobs and modernising administrative support for armed forces employees. In 2007/08 it dealt with £8.6bn of MoD payroll funds.
However, it caused significant overpayments and underpayments, and had wrong data for up to 10% of all military staff, the auditor general said.
The NAO was also unable to verify the level of error in the system, or whether allowances and expenses paid through it were valid.
Although the JPA’s failings have incurred costs of £2.3m, the MoD has claimed back only £516,000 from contractor EDS. The MPs were unable to determine whether this accurately reflected the proportion of blame, or if it was due to weaknesses in the contract the ministry signed.
‘The scope of these failings is significant and impacts upon several areas critical to service personnel satisfaction with life in the armed forces,’ the MPs reported. ‘It is, in our view, truly reprehensible that such mistakes were allowed to be made by those charged with oversight of the JPA programme.’
The MoD also missed five out of its six Public Service Agreement targets for 2007/08.
The department’s ‘over-optimism’ about its ability to fulfil PSA terms was criticised, as was the ambiguous terminology it used in reporting its performance ahead of the final assessment.
An MoD spokesman apologised for the failings of the JPA and admitted ‘there were problems in the first year of operation’. However, he added, ‘significant improvements’ had been made to the system over the past 12 months, and further training had been given to staff.
