Army supply chain mission accomplished

A £2m upgrade of the army's Unicom system was completed on time and on budget, says Tom Young

The new supply management system is expected to save the army £3m by 2011

The Unicom system is one of the less well-known parts of the British Army’s IT infrastructure, despite being one of its largest applications and recently completing a £2m upgrade on time and on budget.

The system has been overshadowed by its more controversial sister, the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) human resources (HR) project, which grabbed headlines after widespread criticism from military personnel over payroll problems.

But Unicom is equally important, handling unit stores and equipment management, and making sure army personnel have enough bullets, ration packs and clothing when and where they need them.

Before 2004, Unicom also incorporated the functions of JPA, which were removed that year to form the first tri-service HR system. In those days Unicom was required to liaise with 450 servers in unit locations around the world. The user terminals were dumb, and each server had to be contacted to extract information on the state of equipment supplies.

“We needed to move forward from there – we thought why not follow a JPA approach and put it all in a central server?” said Martin Abbott, head of software development at Unicom.

And that is what Oracle helped them to do over the next two years, decommissioning the 450 servers and moving all the information centrally onto two servers in the UK.

Information on supplies is now obtained through the new Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) – a secure communications network for the armed forces that allows them to liaise with units around the world without having to use the distributed servers.

Any unit simply uses the Unicom software through a DII terminal to update the central server on the state of their supplies.

The £2m upgrade was delivered on time and on budget last year, and is projected to save the army more than £3m by 2011, thanks to lower maintenance costs and the improved accuracy of information on equipment status.

Some units in very remote locations such as Afghanistan still need to operate separate servers, but Abbott hopes that more secure communication lines in the next two years will eliminate even this need.

And from 2011, Unicom is likely to undergo a rebirth as a new system for stores and equipment across all three armed forces.

Military’s IT manoeuvres are not always so successful

The £7.1bn Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) project provides a secure data and communications network for all the armed forces. The system provides access to a range of applications through a network of terminals around the world. A recent Public Accounts Committee report found that the project is running 18 months late due to bad planning.

The £245m Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system was intended to overhaul the way the armed forces are paid, harmonising pay systems across the forces. It has suffered criticism for paying the wrong amounts to forces staff and being difficult to use, though the Ministry of Defence says complaints have been reduced.

Unicom – the army stores and equipment system – makes sure the army has the kit it needs. It is accessed through DII and liaises with the JPA personnel system to find out where units are around the world. The RAF and the Navy have equivalent systems.