Defence will be undertaking a Technical Refresh Project, to update the technology platform supporting Defence's Human Resources Management System (PMKeyS), which will also involve the integration of Defence's Reserve payment system, CENRESPAYII.
The project will address the current technology risks associated with the PMKeyS and CENRESPAYII systems and ensure continuity of the personnel and pay functions.
UXC Limited will commence work on the Technical Refresh Project in May 2010.
Red Rock Consulting, a wholly owned subsidiary of UXC Limited, and Oracle specialist organisation will deliver the $16 million project.
It is anticipated that this will be completed in the first half of 2012.
The project includes an early replacement of the outdated Reserve payment system in July 2011.
Australian industry will work with Defence in updating the technology platform and in training Defence users of the updated PMKeyS system.
SDSS, ROMAN, PMKeyS - Three Pillars of Disharmony
Defence's decision to retain Oracle for the payroll upgrade ends any medium-term prospect of Defence moving to a single integrated software platform for its HR and payroll, financials and logistics systems.
For the past 10 years Defence has run these three stovepiped systems based on products from competing suppliers.
Thus SAP supplies the ROMAN financials, Mincom the SDSS logistics system and Oracle the PMKeyS HR and payroll systems.
Remarkably each is based on a different chart of accounts.
As former Defence Secretary Allan Hawke remarked many years ago, these three systems can't, don't or won't talk to each other, other than under extreme duress through extraordinarily complicated interfaces and ‘hydraulics' at the end of the financial year.
He said they even gave different answers to the same question - for example, the cost of personnel.
"They can't, of course, coherently answer questions that would put us in danger of taking an informed business decision - eg how many people are involved in, and what is the cost of, any particular output or sub-output.
"In other words, they are transaction processing systems that do not readily produce meaningful management information.
"The absence of a simple data dictionary compounds the problem of communication between these corporate systems - each describes the same data differently and the ‘apples with oranges' comparison is the inevitable outcome."
These cylinders of excellence (much nicer than stovepipes) have been making life difficult for some time and will continue to do so for some time to come.