sysper21In the afternoon we had a coordination meeting about SYSPER2. What, you ask, is SYSPER2? It’s a very sophisticated and high-performance software programme developed by the European Commission to handle the management of its human resources (think ‘system’ and ‘personnel’). Parts of it are still under development but it is expected to come on stream pretty soon. Until now, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions have managed their HR with their own software programme, Centurio, developed in-house. But Centurio is coming to the end of its life and anyway SYSPER2 is much better. Would it make sense for the Committees to direct scarce resources towards the development of a new, tailor-made programme? The answer is clearly ‘no’. At the same time, we need to know how we would be obliged to adapt if we took over SYSPER2 lock, stock and barrel, since the Committees have very distinctive HR policies. To what extent would the Commission be prepared to ‘tailor’ a version of its programme? To what extent can we tailor an in-house interface or plug-ins? The meeting was designed to explore those questions and start coming up with operational conclusions. It is a truism, of course, but economies of scale come at a price.