Armed Forces Day 2010 - where will you be?

Cardiff is hosting the national Armed Forces Day event for 2010

Armed Forces Day takes place on Saturday 26 June. Designed to honour our Service personnel, past, present and future; the theme for Armed Forces Day is 'Show your Support'.

The national event takes place on Saturday 26 June and will be hosted by Cardiff City Council. This will be completed by more than 170 community-led events in towns and cities across the UK on or around 26 June. For the full event listing and to see how you can get involved in your local event, click here for further details.
Public support for Armed Forces Day is growing every day. There are now more than 260,000 fans on the dedicated Facebook page and almost 1,300 followers on Twitter. Lots of messages of support are posted every day. Click here to visit the Facebook page or follow Armed Forces Day on Twitter.

SPVA wins two Top Awards

Pictured left to right: Capt Ian Bisson (Royal Navy), Kevin Large (HP), Kathy Barnes (SPVA Chief Executive), Paul Couch (HP) and Lesley Grant-Pavitt (HP) receive the SSON awards.

SPVA has scooped two top awards at the prestigious ‘Shared Services Outsourcing Network (SSON)’ 2010 Industry Awards, in Edinburgh on 25 May. The Agency first won the award for ‘Best Mature Outsourced Services Delivery’ for our management of the UK Forces’ Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system. We then went on to beat organisations from across Europe, the Middle-East and Africa to win the highest accolade of the night –the ‘Winner of Winners’ award.

These awards recognise the success of the outsourcing relationship within SPVA between the Ministry of Defence and HP Enterprise Services that started in November 1997, and the successful introduction of JPA from 2006. JPA has revolutionised personnel and HR services for the UK Armed Forces, bringing together the Navy, Army and RAF onto one system, allowing users to update details themselves and providing one dedicated contact point for help and support.

In making the awards, judges from top European companies remarked that SPVA “demonstrated a leading ability to deliver change” and had a “relentless focus on technological development”. They were also impressed by the £130million savings delivered to date and the ‘impressively strong’ relationship with HP in delivering Agency services.

For further information, check out our press release.

SPVA puts veterans in the frame

2010 will see SPVA developing Social Media products, embracing the latest ways to communicate our information to the Digital Generation.

Our products are raising awareness of the services our Agency provides to the Armed Forces Community. Over the past few months, we've launched our first podcasts followed by the recent introduction of our first videocast. All are accessible via our Social Media Hub which includes links to our products on YouTube and iTunes.

For further information about our first video cast, check out our latest press release here