Defence: risks on the new payroll software – Le Figaro

The Court of Auditors makes big doubts on the capacity of the Ministry of Defense to implement “Source Balance” from 2017, replacing disastrous Louvois software.

Please do not revive the “disaster Louvois.” Commissioned in 2011, sales management computer system of some 250 000 soldiers became notorious for its bugs repeatedly. These have caused delays in the settlement of balances, involving great difficulties thousands of families of soldiers engaged on foreign theaters (Opex). These malfunctions have also resulted in overpayments, or conversely lower balances that usually received. Despite efforts to run the system properly, the Court of Auditors advanced “chronic instability of Louvois.” As evidenced by the 5,000 calls and emails per month recorded in 2015 by the “assistance balance cell” set up by the Hotel de Brienne.

170 right management rules for compensation

Faced with this mess computer and human tragedies it caused, Jean-Yves Le Drian had whistled the end of the game in December 2013 . the Minister of Defence decided to replace Louvois another computer program called Source Balance. The idea is to manage the project as a weapons program in order to avoid delays and reduce complexity at most. The goal is to begin its deployment from the first quarter 2017, first in the Navy, so that it is fully operational three years later, each step for evaluating the soundness and efficiency of Balance Source.

The Court of Auditors sends in his report, serious doubts about the ability to keep the schedule and implement a fully efficient computer system. “Balance Source is an IT project management among the most complex of its specific features and the number of personnel involved,” it said in the report. “Major difficulties (..) are not yet under control,” says the Court, citing 170 right management rules for compensation related to “the complexity and evolutionary combination inherent in military life and the diversity of operations entrusted various military personnel. ” A member may, for example, go on Opex, return to France to take leave, then leave for training before returning to the field outside the borders. At each step, the indemnity is different. The Ministry of Defence has also “struggled to develop documents (…) relating to compensatory right” notes the Court.

Regularise “past events”

for judges of the rue Cambon, it will also make coexist and Louvois Source Balance at least until 2021 to “enable regularization of past events” (overpayments or the reverse). It alerts on the “insert Source Balance across all existing software applications and own IT human resources …”. The Court also stresses the need to launch a training program for personnel involved in HR and in the payment of salaries (human input errors were found on Louvois).

The remarks of the Court of Auditors therefore have nothing reassuring for the French military, as well as for staff working in the armed services.