The Environment Agency is struggling to get adequate
performance from a £17m human resources and payroll system
introduced in April.
The system, supplied and supported by Oracle, can only be accessed
by half the expected number of employees at one time, according to
an internal document seen by Computer Weekly.
Due to load-balancing problems, the agency's regional offices have
been divided into two groups which are only allowed to access the
system at certain times. Only special circumstances exempt users
from this rule.
The system, named 1B1S (One Business, One System) went live at the
beginning of April. There was no period of parallel running with
the agency's legacy systems.
An Environment Agency IT department memo described the problem to
IT staff. "At present load balancing isn't working and only one
server is being used, effectively meaning 1B1S is running at 50% -
hence the performance problems," it said.
A spokeswoman for the agency said it was able to pay its 11,800
employees and bill 50,000 customers on time but did not deny
ongoing performance problems.
"The speed of the system has not been as good as the agency
requires and Oracle is giving high priority to resolving this by
implementing a major hardware extension to its system and tuning
the software configuration," she said.
"In the meantime, the agency is optimising performance of the
system for priority users and all essential activities by
timetabling user access. This arrangement has enabled the
successful payroll, billing, payments and procurement activities,
as well as allowing 7,000 expenses claims to be made online.
"We are working with Oracle to ensure that the new system works to
its potential as soon as possible so that the expected benefits to
employees and the environment can be realised."
Oracle is involved in building the £325m NHS HR and payroll system
and also has a role in the £2.3bn national programme for IT.
An Oracle spokeswoman said, "Oracle is working closely with the
Environment Agency to assess the current situation and to ensure
that all matters specifically related to Oracle software and
services used in this project are identified and resolved in a
timely fashion."