Recommendation 4

The Department’s lamentable failure to implement a Single Living Accommodation Management Information System (SLAMIS) over the past eight years means it is unable to manage its Single Living Accommodation efficiently. Project SLAMIS was initiated in 2013 to provide basic information on the Single Living Accommodation estate of a kind that any organisation managing property would expect to have. Progress has been very slow, and the project was cancelled, then restarted, and now should be in service by 2022. We are extremely disappointed at this lack of progress for such a simple system, and have seen the Department having similar problems with other IT systems, such as that supporting army recruitment. The Department is developing a bespoke system instead of using platforms already available, which seems unnecessary given that other organisations already have systems to meet similar requirements. SLAMIS is expected to provide accommodation booking facilities and a picture of how accommodation is being used. This should aid investment decisions and help better match supply and demand of Single Living Accommodation. Although a substantial amount of Single Improving single living accommodation for service personnel 7 Living Accommodation is unoccupied, Substitute Service Single Accommodation (SSSA) cost the Department £32.4 million in 2019–20, with a large amount of SSSA located in London and Bristol. Recommendation: The Department should report back to the committee in six months on progress with delivering the SLAMIS system, including to confirm when in 2022 it will be fully operational.