JPA Loop!
 

I've currently had a pay issue with JPAC for coming up on four months (I know its nothing compared to some!).

Whilst I understand that certain elements of our pay are dealt with by our unit staff, and others by JPA itself, isn't about time that SOMEONE sorted out who does what, and more importantly cleared it up with the respective agencies!!! Just to stop this endless JPA loop of JPAC, Unit HR, JPAC, PMA, JPAC etc. etc. etc. Because as it stands at the moment, I've been sent by JPA to my HR staff 5 times, for issues that they have no authority over!!!:ugh::ugh:

Not wanting just to criticise JPA though, I must congratulate them on the great idea of a blameless/nameless culture, as not once have even managed to get hold of an individual office, let alone a person to deal with the issue, it just seems to get passed around. :D


Spam

How do reservists manage?
 

As an ex-regular I read this thread with dismay and disbelief. Hearing of the trials of those of you who can log in at work and persist with chasing your issues I wonder how reservists with limited opportunities and access to the system follow up issues they may have? Are they having as hard a time as the rest of you? Anyone know?
The Ancient Mariner

SPVA Management in Cloud Cuckoo Land
 

My other half attended a brief given by Director of Military Ops (a Navy Commodore) at the SPVA earlier this week, in which he claimed JPA was a success and very few complaints were being received about the system!!:confused:
This is not my experience! Are SPVA management living in the real world?

He was obviously working on the mistaken assumption that if you tell people something enough times they'll start to believe you. I wonder how many people mention JPA as a causal factor in their PVR applications? I did.

Oh, I remember, JPA doesn't track PVRs.........

TT

If you can be bothered to look back through all the previous pages on this thread, which I can't, I believe somebody told us all how the world of JPA define a 'complaint'.

I seem to remember it is some different from your and my definition - but I could be wrong.

As I said I am working from memory, and I'm not getting any younger!

Reservists
 

In my (limited) experience of JPA as an Auggie, we're still paper based and dependent upon the Registry admin personnel to do/chase things.
In some ways, the forms are easier - e.g. duty and HTD travel on one form, though non-HTD travel seems a bit more complicated than the old 1771.

I dont believe it _ JPA up for award!
 

From MoD Website (26 Sep)
The MOD has been short listed for five Civil Service Awards in the face of stiff competition from many other Whitehall departments.
600 nominations were submitted by government departments and yesterday, 25 September 2007, a shortlist of just 36 successful nominations from 17 departments was announced. Following the Department for Work and Pensions, the MOD scored one of the highest numbers of nominations per department. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on 6 November 2007 at Lancaster House in London.
The MOD's nominations include
Technology Award and Project and Programme Management Award
Joint Personnel Administration (JPA); MOD recently completed rollout of joint personnel administration (JPA), a hugely ambitious programme to transform delivery of military personnel administration. The new JPAC provides essential support to operational delivery. 20,000 calls are handled every week, with average call waiting times under ten seconds and 85 per cent of enquiries are cleared at first point of contact. JPA has been nominated for both the Technology Award and the Project and management Award.MoD Website
Speechless!!:ugh:

Speechless.
.
.
.
.

Is it just our place or have the single cell life forms at JPA mangaed to lose all the pay slips for last month?

Can you imagine how awful those not nominated must be. :rolleyes:

I wonder what a referendum amongst its users would say about its utility, accuracy and reliability. Especially as parts of it still don't work........:rolleyes:

See if they get an award now!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007460151,00.html

From the article in the Current Bun:

"Last night the MoD blamed soldiers themselves for the disaster.
A spokesman said: “Unfamiliarity by personnel using the system would appear to be the cause of some of the pay delays and errors.”"

First rule of a cock-up - protect the guilty and blame the innocent :ugh:

The Telegraph have also picked up on this.
The awards get coverage here and there is a nice feedback option too for what you think on the awards nice comments so far on JPA. :ugh:

Thanks for the link, Almost Done. Have posted my comment. I hope the light dawns on the awarding body that the only people patting themselves on the back about JPA are the misguided so-and-sos who inflicted it on the rest of us.

Mark my words they'll be giving one to DII(F) next
 

:ugh:
God help us all and save us from F***wit programmers
SJ

Have just read the current crop of comments via the link on Almost Done's post, above. I really hope those at the top are taking some notice of the lucidly expressed anger in that feedback column, rather than relying on the so-called 'lack of complaints' excuse trotted out via the PR system.

Thanks Mike, that's my comment.

I left the RAF about a year ago and have just recently received a bill from them. Apparently I owe money, about £150, but when I called the helpline, nobody could tell me why I owed the money. She suggested I call the PSF (HR ?) at my last unit to try and sort it out. I pointed out that I am no longer in the RAF and have no real inclination to sort out their cock up. So I am now awaiting the paperwork to show what I owe and why. I wonder how long it will take ?

This just compounded all the hassle I had with JPA whilst I was in. I have worked in software and safety engineering for the last 10 years and this is truly one of the worst implemented projects I have seen.

I really feel for the people who still have to use this system.

S_H

S_H

Why don't you tell them you'll see them in court?

STH

JPA
 

Mike PM me

Welcome to the site Sarah Arnott from Computing Magazine.

Hope you have time to troll through all the JPA complaints over the last year or so. Note that some of these contributors fly combat aircraft over foreign soil (and some are wannabees).......

Pay and allowances should not be on their mind whilst conducting their 'core' business, but unfortunately it is....

There are also those that keep the aircraft in the sky here as well. They need to be focused on the job too, not worrying about payruns and allowances.

Bring back that late 80s flight safety video with pilot Richard O'Sullivan - "Distractions"

New thread for specific JPA problems?
 

Mike,

Just a thought, but you could filter some input through a dedicated thread?

One more for the pot Sarah...........

Almost 12 months after leaving the RAF, JPA has thrown up a debt that I apparently owed on PVR exit in October last year. No mention of any overpayment on any payslips I have ever received (payslips sent to my last place of work even though I had left the Service!!), now I am being threatened with legal action for repayment:ugh:.

Massive JPA Underpayments revealed in Hansard!
 

Armed Forces: Pay

Mr. Roger Williams: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how much has been (a) overpaid and (b) underpaid to military personnel stationed in (i) Afghanistan and (ii) elsewhere through the Joint Personnel Administration system in 2007. [154548]

Derek Twigg: The number of over and underpayments resulting from Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system errors in 2007 can be provided, although the information requested for Afghanistan and elsewhere is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The figures are:

Month Overpaid Underpaid Total
January 161 1,383 1,544
February 70 0 70
March 229 54 283
April 13,908 252 14,160
May 3,340 1,181 4,521
June 0 90 90
July 2,978 416 3,394
August(1) 0 51,917 51,917

(1) Figures for August are subject to revision and refinement.

The increase in the number of overpayments in April was due primarily to transitional data errors from the Army legacy systems where elements were not picked up as expected by the JPA system. Records were corrected in time for the May payroll.

In August 35,553 incorrect payments of £3.00 were made to the discontinued RN and Royal Marines Dependants’ Fund. The error has been corrected and the money will be re-credited to pay accounts in October.

In addition 16,364 underpayments of Home to Duty Travel claims for RN reservists occurred. The error has been corrected and the claims have reprocessed for payment in September.

LOA
 

Apologies if this point has been made in the previous 60 odd pages but are PA /Specaircrew aware that JPA has been paying the wrong rate of LOA? Those of us who are still entitled to Sqn Ldr LOA rates (ie Sec Aircrew and PA who were previously SA) are only being paid Flt Lt rates. So far the system has failed to address the matter so I suggest everyone in this boat asks HR to look at it -that way perhaps one blunty can find out how its done and we can all get our dues.

So, in 2007, the total number of people underpaid by JPA, is more than serve in the RAF.

Overall, if the UK Armed Forces number 200,000 then about 38% of personnel have not had the correct pay. Surely that must deserve an award.

The beancounters must be loving it, how much interest are they getting on the money that stays in their bank, and not the worker's.

"So, in 2007, the total number of people underpaid by JPA, is more than serve in the RAF."

Err, only if all the reported payment cock-ups all refer to different people!

It's more likely that several people will have been messed around on many, many different occasions!

One is not of course a computer nerd, but if it's a software (or indeed wetware) problem, how come the "underpaid" incidents are more than double the "overpaid".

One would expect them to be similar in number............don't even cock-ups (cocks-up?) follow a normal distribution.......

Of course these are only the figures representing those that JPA 'admits' to under/over paying. My pay has been wrong for several months now, but the JPA system has yet to admit that fact, so my case will not yet show up in the statistics!

ZH875

Not sure where your stats have come from, and I agree that JPA has faults, but how did almost 52K people get underpaid in Aug 07? We no longer have 52K. If it is errors rather than people it still means that all serving personnel had at least one fault with their pay in Aug.

On a positive note - realising that this approach doesn't usually meet with approval here - pre-JPA it regularly took 3 or 4 weeks to pay a T&S claim, my last 4 have taken 4 working days from generating the claim to it being paid into my account.

Pse read italic text before replying

Tonka

errr more than just the Air Force on JPA ....:cool: Clue is in the title - Joint ...

Have a look at AonP post 22nd Oct 2011hrs - 35K+ of those in Aug were due to charging for the RN/RM Dep fund that doesn't exist any more.

The clue's in the J of JPA... our dark blue and green bretheren are aboard now.

Quite. And, notwithstanding everyone whingeing about doing things on the desktop, I find it easier to enter claims online than on a 1771 (though I accept the old system of just writing where you'd been and what you'd done and letting an expert work out what you were entitled to had definite advantages). The facility to have your pay split between diferent accounts has definite advantages as well.

Edit: Damn, beaten to it. That's what you get for taking time to say nice things about JPA.

Damn....

You mean a lifeform exists outside of the light blue one then?

Good point though....Taxi

The Balanced View
 

Good to see that in the 1300 replies there is a balanced view consisting of 2 positive and 1298 negative replies....

...Am I now guilty of Buzz Word Bingo?

I still can't even log on to JPA.

Would welcome advice on where to send a written complaint/redress that would result in anything happening at all. :ugh:

D IFF

The starting point is that you have to raise a telephone request and "log a call" (0800 085 3600 Option 4 Option 1 if you are RAF) or an online i-Support request. "They" have 10 working days to get you an answer. If you get no satisfaction (highly likely) then you can raise a formal complaint which goes to the JPA Ops Room at Centurion House (can't remember the rest of the address but it is on one of those JPA Customer Charter flyers that were issued when JPA started but are like gold dust now). If no-one else can post the address I will try and get it at the weekend and PM you.

Once you have formally complained (and don't expect that to get you any satisfaction) then the next step is redress..... but who do you actually redress? I am just approaching that stage now so will let you know when I find out.

I have just found out that complainants are now be encouraged by a lot of PSFs to redress, this is now believed to be the only way that their star-ships will ever believe that there is a significant problem with JPA.

Also remember that JPA cannot close a call without your approval to do so (recent change). Up until very recently they could close a call whenever they felt like it - that helps their stats. Now they need your permission to do so. If they close a call without your permission ensure that you raise another call and reference any earlier "calls". Also include the fact they closed a call without your permission in any formal complaint.

Oh and "Good Luck".

Just a suggestion from personal experience, but take time to consider the comments you make to, and questions you ask of JPAC. I naively told them with my first fault that I thought there was a problem. They confirmed the problem and so closed the call, having "solved" my report.

So the next time I distinctly phrased the questions in terms of how and when they were going to solve the problem, and specifically told them that confirming to me that a problem existed would be insufficient as a reply to close the call. I was overwhelmed by the number of call backs I received to resolve the issue.

I guess I was lucky with only having had 2 problems so far, compared to some of you. But if you act as an intelligent customer with challenges to them that cannot accept a yes or no answer, they can't wriggle out of it so easily.:E

AFPS 75 or AFPS 05?
 

Firstly, sorry if anything along these lines has been mentioned before. I did have a look through the thread but couldn't spot anything. Oh, and this is the first time I've posted so hello all and fingers crossed.

Now, not to be alarmist or anything but I have just had a 'slight problem' pointed out to me with regard to JPA records. All serving personnel will of course know which AFPS they decided to opt for. You were probably influenced by what length of time you intend to serve etc.

You would hope this information had been correctly input onto JPA. Yep, you guessed it! Out of just 3 personnel checked here at my Unit, 2 are incorrectly recorded on JPA as being on AFPS 05 when they in actual fact opted to remain on AFPS 75!

The 2 people in question have both contacted JPAC and JPAC told both of them that they'll be changed onto the correct pension scheme (one was done over the phone and the other was made to send JPAC a fax which had to be addressed to a supervisor). But what about those who do not know there's a problem? Will correction be that easy 10 years down the line?

I was one of those 3 personnel checked and luckily for me, I was one on the correct scheme. Unfortunately it took 2 separate phone calls to JPAC to discover this. The first 'specialist' said her system didn't tell you what pension scheme you were on (and yes, I did use the Pension option). :ugh: After getting increasing frustrated I tried the old method of putting the phone down and calling again, in the hope of getting someone who knew what they were doing. This lady did and gave me the answer in about 30 seconds :D. (Oh, and by the way the Pension Inquiry Option and Pay and Personnel Record Inquiry number both go through to the same office).

Now I know checking just 3 people doesn't prove anything but HR staffs here are currently in the process of trying to discover if this issue is more widespread. The 3 of us all work on different Sqns (we just happen to know each other), so unless it's an issue directly related to this Unit I think there could be problems. I'd like to hear from anyone else who has discovered similar issues.

It would be nice to know you're going to get that Pension you opted for…………:rolleyes: