An 18-month project led by Capgemini and Microsoft to supply 10,000 military and civilian staff from the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) with online access to information services such as human resources systems has been completed.
Military personnel, including UK troops currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, can now use the Internet Access to Shared Services (IASS) to connect to MOD HR systems to enable them to complete expenses claims, update personal details or book themselves on training courses.
IASS provides users with chip and pin-style authentication via the Government Gateway and can be accessed via any PC, laptop or mobile phone with an Internet connection.
Security is further enhanced by features based on Capgemini’s Identity and Access Management Services and Microsoft’s Intelligent Application Gateway. The platform is hosted at one of Capgemini’s data centres in the UK.
David Longhurst, MOD’s IASS project leader, said: “We have been modernising our internal administrative processes by changing from paper-based systems to an electronic service. While this has worked well internally, we were left with around 10,000 staff unable to access to our internal systems online from their place of work. We wanted to give all of them secure access to the appropriate MOD systems from any Internet-connected PC.”
The project, carried out by Capgemini, Microsoft, several units within the MOD and specialist IT vendors, is expected to save the MOD several millions of pounds over the next ten years by cutting paperwork and administrative tasks. A number of HR services have been moved online and are accessible via an employee portal.
The new service will be rolled out during 2009 to around 10,000 users, mostly based overseas. This follows a successful trial of IASS at defence units in several parts of the world. If this larger rollout proves successful, the system may be rolled out to all or most of the MOD’s 320,000 military and civilian personnel.
