Shared Personnel Solution

M.O.D.
Officers' Joint Appraisal Report (OJAR) Case Study

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) provides for the defence and security of the United Kingdom and Overseas Territories. One of its key aims is to coordinate and "bring together maritime, ground and air components into coherent joint forces under unified command". The recent formation of units such as the Joint Helicopter Command and Joint Force 2000; the establishment of the Defence Logistics Organisation and most importantly, the continuing experience of operations such as the Kosovo campaign, mean that officers of the three Services are increasingly working shoulder to shoulder. Greater consistency and harmonisation of processes across the three Services has therefore become increasingly important to the MOD.

The complexity and size of the organisation poses a unique and contrasting set of challenges. The huge diversity across the Armed Forces and the civilian departments within the MOD means a need to overcome cultural as well as technical differences. Despite years of investment through the Applied Research Programme, the MOD has built up a number of federated systems that were only loosely connected. The consultancy Electronic Data Services (EDS) was chosen by the MOD to form a partnership with a newly created Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency (AFPAA) to help integrate these federated systems and to ensure that all new e-business software would fit seamlessly into the technical architecture.

Officers' Joint Appraisal Report promotes Tri-service Unity

AFPAA function is to deal with all the personnel requirements of the Royal Navy Army, and Royal Air Force across three main sites, 19 different HR systems, and supporting personnel in numerous countries. In the mid 1990s the three main single-Service sites started to take a unified approach and embarked on a project to harmonise the personnel processes across all three Services. The concept of a tri-service Officers' Joint Appraisal Report (OJAR) arose following the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (which reshaped the Armed Forces to give them greater capability in responding to the security requirements of the future). One of its aims was to harmonise the appraisal reporting processes within the three Services in support of the increasing joint activity. The replacement of the three existing reporting systems with a single one clearly offered a number of benefits. For example it simplified the task of appraising staff for those Reporting Officers who employed officers of more than one Service. It removed an irritant to operational capability and also provided a fairer system of appraisal for Subject Officers throughout the Armed Forces.

OJAR is a comprehensive document that is normally completed by up to four people and must operate effectively for all three Services. The form is first issued to the Subject Officer who completes a section of the form. It is then forwarded through a maximum of three Reporting Officers, each of whom completes their part of the appraisal. The completed report is then used to inform the planning of future appointments and training, and selection boards for promotion and change of commission. Appraisal Reports are raised at least annually for around 40,000 officers, spread across many countries and theatres of operation. Each part of the form needs to be signed before being forwarded to the next Reporting Officer. Eventually the data from the form is entered into an Oracle database in one of the three Service Personnel Centres.

The design of the OJAR presented the MOD project team with a number of challenges for change; not least achieving consensus amongst the Services. It was of paramount importance that, throughout the project, the team retained the confidence of the officer corps. Hence, the OJAR content and functionality evolved from its predecessors, whilst also drawing on 'best practice'. It was also important that the OJAR remained compatible, where appropriate, with existing single-Service procedures, systems and reporting chains as well as the three Services' Personnel Centres.

Electronic Forms Increase Efficiency

Through supporting OJAR with an appropriate IT package a number of benefits would accrue, such as front-end data and electronic transfer. Secondly by integrating the form with an Oracle database, data could be both pre-filled and later downloaded, eliminating re-keying errors and producing time efficiencies.

The software chosen to e-enable OJAR needed to offer much more than just these functions. Firstly, due to the nature of some of the MOD's work the e-forms software needed to be able to work off line to permit those working on isolated IT networks or laptops to access the form. For isolated units such as submarines, which at times need to maintain radio silence, it was a core requirement that the form could be filled in off line, but could also be e-mailed when required. Furthermore, the form was highly complex as it covered all three Services, thus some aspects had to be Service-specific, and it was essential that the e-forms software had enough built-in intelligence to make the forms easy to use.

OfficeForms was selected to provide the software for OJAR following an earlier market survey by Project CASH, which was responsible for delivering networks, workstations and software to the Army Foundation headquarters. Following a survey by a large private technical outsource company it was established that the MOD had around 11,300 forms, across the Services. Everyone involved believed it was essential to find a suitable software solution that had the capability to make all their forms electronic in order to produce a common, robust approach that could meet the needs of all the Services into the foreseeable future. It was suggested that the MOD use one e-forms provider to meet the needs of putting all the forms online and they recommended OfficeForms. OfficeForms was chosen over six competitors due to its flexibility, straightforward development interface and functionally rich tool set. It was also judged, by the MOD and EDS, that Toplevel could work effectively in meeting and adapting to key requirements.

An Accurate Report

Work began on the OJAR IT project in Summer 2000. Toplevel started using OfficeForms technology to translate the form into a highly intelligent electronic document. One of the major issues that faced Toplevel was translating a newly-written Joint Service Guide (a large document of over 170 pages) that accompanied the OJAR form, into a useful electronic help function. When specifying the requirements for OJAR's guidance AFPAA had suggested that multiple levels of help, working in unison, were needed.

Toplevel carefully integrated three levels of help into the report. The first level is a mandatory help message that "pops-up" when the user reaches a specific point. The user needs to press the Close button to remove the message before he or she can continue to complete the document. The second level of help is a window that runs down the left hand margin of the document. This remains current with the active section and provides instant access to basic help for the user. The third level of help is the complete Joint Service Guide in electronic format. This has been made more accessible through the addition of (HTML) links that direct the user to specific parts of the document. This solution provides users with instant access to both abridged and unabridged versions of the Guide. Through utilising OfficeForms technology the help function has been made highly accessible.

It was important to all concerned that OJAR was user-friendly and was quickly accepted by all users, including those with limited IT skills. According to Mark Walsh of EDS, the main obstacle that everyone faced was overcoming the cultural difficulties of implementing a technical product into an organisation that is still fundamentally paper based. In order to achieve this OfficeForms technology was used to create a "paper" look and feel to the Report, which allowed the less experienced IT users to feel familiar and at ease with the technology. This not only increased the accessibility of OJAR but also considerably reduced the training required for officers to use the form, therefore reducing the cost of the project. The MOD and EDS only trained a proportion of personnel within various parts of the organisation, who then took on the role as super-users and were referred to by untrained users if they required any assistance. Commander Perry Abbott (a member of the OJAR IT Project Team) explains about the OJAR project's success "Our people appreciate that they have a user friendly package. They like the way it works. It has all gone extremely well!”

Another core business requirement was to increase the accuracy of the data collected and also improve the consistency in appraising Officers. OfficeForms facilitated this by incorporating a number of intelligent features such as drop down boxes, radio buttons, mandatory fields and field checks. The Report format of OJAR also incorporated text boxes. In OJAR users are given access to larger "drafting" boxes where, initially, they can write much longer reports, which they can then edit so the text will fit into the box on the form.

Securing the Form

Security was also another key concern when processing this document electronically. The MOD felt unable to move completely away from paper signatures at this stage but was keen to have the benefits of e-mailing a secure document. OfficeForms technology provided the answer with SecureForm. This offers the ability to secure an electronic copy of a document or in this case, part of a document with a code. As OJAR is completed by several people it is imperative that when each person signs his or her section that the information is locked down. The user completes the section, locks it down with a password, which then locks the form information down and gives it a unique code. The user then prints off the section, signs it in ink and forwards it on to the next person in the reporting chain. The electronic document is then forwarded by either e-mail or disk. At the end of the process all sections of the report have been completed and secured and there are paper documents containing signatures and codes to confirm it. If the form is in some way tampered with and then locked down again the unique code will change and will not match the code printed on the signed paper version.
Electronic forms spring into action.

Careful piloting of OJAR began in Spring 2001 and further refinements were added to the first version. EDS, Mark Walsh said "the move towards electronic forms posed a number of difficulties which were very successfully over come by the combined efforts of EDS, Toplevel and the MOD". In summer 2001 the OfficeForms software was rolled out to approximately 50,000 PCs across various locations and network infrastructures and standalones. In the last year approximately 40,000 appraisals were successfully raised. Commander Perry Abbott said about the success of the OfficeForms document "OJAR has given us a means of collecting data electronically. It allows us to conduct trend analysis and ensure that Reporting Officers' gradings (of personnel) are fair."

Jane Roberts from Toplevel said about the OJAR Project:

"This was a particularly demanding project due to the complexity of both the document and infrastructure. However this flagship project has now been rolled out to over 50,000 PCs and has gone from strength to strength. It has been particularly rewarding to see the success of the Officers' Joint Appraisal Report being built on and extended. We look forward to continuing to work with EDS and the MOD to help in the complex process of e-enabling and unifying the three Services."

It is due to the success of these initial forms that in Spring 2002 the report was extended into a second appraisal that includes Airmen Aircrew. OfficeForms is also a candidate for providing a third electronic appraisal form that would cover all non-commissioned ranks across all three Services.

 

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