New Army personnel system working as expected

| January 31, 2023

Let’s be clear about this…”working as expected” if you’ve spent maybe 50 years watching how ‘well’ Army personnel systems work. Working well from an objective, “gets the job done efficiently and well in a timely manner version of ‘well’?” Uh, no, not so much.

The outage, which is preventing the Army from issuing DD-214 discharge forms or processing retirement requests for approximately 4,000 troops, is due to “data processing issues,” according to the spokesperson for the service’s personnel directorate, Lt. Col. Joseph Payton.

“We anticipate (the Transition Processing System) to be fully functional within a week,” the spokesperson added. “Once it’s up and running, we will prioritize processing [discharge forms] for our transitioning Soldiers who have been impacted.”

How nice, the Army has caught up to the Navy’s inability to issues DD-214s.

The outage comes amid the service’s bumpy implementation of its new human resources platform, the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army, which began in December after more than a year of delays attributed to feared data issues.

It’s the second significant hiccup associated with the platform’s launch — around 25,000 beneficiaries briefly lost their TRICARE health insurance last week due to an error transmitting data to a benefits eligibility system. Wormuth acknowledged the TRICARE lapse Tuesday evening but highlighted the speed with which it was resolved.

“I wouldn’t have reached out to [Army Times] if the Army had just acknowledged it and just said, ‘Hey, these are the issues,’” the officer said. “It’s almost like they’re fearful to acknowledge their mistakes.”

Army Times

That last quote was from an officer trying to transition out. I am absolutely sure none of this impacts recruiting issues. At all. New recruits don’t think about getting out, or taking care of their families, do they? That’s only the older, seasoned (read: “more disposable”) soldiers.

BUT: The good news – football playoffs are available on AFN world wide. They at least made the important stuff happen, right?

“The NFL post-season was made available to us on AFN,” said Kim Antos, AFN’s chief of digital platforms. “Gaining those NFL rights to the post-season was an amazing opportunity and we were able to offer that first weekend of postseason playoff games, as video on demand content.”   Army Times II

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army, Military issues, Pentagon

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Carlton

An officer was affected? This is more serious than I thought.

Normally things like this only affect E-4 and below.

Andy11M

More like E4s and below get told to f off and come back later by the S shops or the PSB desk drivers

Carlton

Yes…a lot of “E-5 Sergeant Major” types in those places.

Skivvy Stacker

In supply it was a matter of “no, you can’t have that. If I give you that I won’t have it in inventory and it’ll screw up my records. You can submit a request, then refile it in 90 days for final disapproval if you want…”

OlafTheTanker

Weird that, how we never hear of things like this affecting say, O-6 and higher.

Anonymous

Know a LTC(P) whose promotion is held up– in the O6 position, approved by DA– simply because the intervening bureaucracy can’t get it together.

Anonymous

Functions in a sub-optimal… yada yada

Last edited 1 year ago by Anonymous
USMCMSgt (Ret)

Poor excuses for failing a basic process…

Here’s an idea: Keep some of the old paper versions of the DD214’s / DD215’s on hand (make sure they remain controlled) and get a fuggin’ typewriter.

Sometimes you have to go back to the “old school ways” of doing things to make something work.

USMC Steve

I remember well the Selectric III typewriters. They were around when I came in in 1978, and were still around when I retired in 1998.

jeff LPH 3 63-66

No probem getting my DD214 in 1966 after leaving the OKIE 3.

USMC Steve

I bet back when you were on it, the ship was practically new and stuff.

Berliner

I used to hate typing DD Form 4’s (enlistment/reenlistment contracts) so I wrote a program in DBase to do it for me.

Anonymous

This’ll work great when the Russkies and/or Chicoms take out the Internet.

MustangCPT

Transition Processing System?
TPS?
As in, TPS reports? Are these fuckers for real? Is this the Army or motherfucking “Office Space.” All we need now is Bill Lundberg walking around drinking coffee and “The Bobs” conducting Soldiers’ exit interviews.

Anonymous

PII, you know…
comment image

TopGoz

That’s the wrong cover sheet. Didn’t you get the memo?

Anonymous

Where’s my stapler?!
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Last edited 1 year ago by Anonymous
USMC Steve

It’s a plot. They know they cannot recruit anyone or anything that has a ghost of a chance of actually doing the job, so they aren’t letting anyone out.

Graybeard

So “Screw the Soldiers” is still a thing in the Pentagon, I see.

Boiling mad CPO

Years ago (1979) every naval installation had its own personnel office and things got done. Than the navy went to a central personnel office and things still got done. As a personnel chief, I was against this transition and was very vocal. I lost every augment and the navy did it the navy way.

I retired soon after – 22 years

Veritas Omnia Vincit

Government never becomes more efficient on its own, that’s true whether we’re talking about the US or any other government on the planet. Government becomes a monolith that seeks to expand its central control system over the governed and the branches of the government whether military or not are no different.

Lack of qualified candidates drives some of this as well on the military side, making the military so unattractive to the general public that numbers are down, the size of the force is down and the general opinion in the private sector that the military tends to screw the very people it claims to honor and depend on all impact this reality.

I’m sure cutting their health care inadvertently, not issuing paperwork in a timely fashion, and generally reinforcing the negative perception won’t further impact recruitment and training…we’ll just keep offering waivers and lowering standards until it becomes non-functional at every level.

USMC Steve

The pool of qualified candidates is pretty small now. I read that over 70 percent of potential prospects were either unqualified for physical or mental, or in some cases, both categories.

KoB

Sure glad that using all of these computers and centralized data systems has expedited the processing of paper work. TPS (Toilet Paper Supplies) are vital and important to military operations, ‘specially now with everything going to sh^t.

Makes sense that if you can’t get anyone to enlist, you may as well delay the discharge of those wanting to get out.

Skivvy Stacker

When I got done with Service Support School at Camp Lejeune in December of 1976, I was given the MOS of 3043; Supply Administration and Operations Man (hence my handle of “Skivvy Stacker”).
I am proud to say that with that certificate in hand, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, didn’t understand any of the paperwork, anything about receiving, inventory, distribution, or purchasing. Not a damn thing.
I will also tell you that it was much MUCH easier that way, because if you did things the way they were SUPPOSED to be done, it would never have gotten done.

rgr769

That is what I liked about my service in the Viet of the Nam. By the time arrived, all the bullshit that didn’t work had been dispensed with. The Army was the most efficient I had ever seen it.

timactual

My mileage varied. Partly due to having to cope with new “leaders” (every six months, at least, for officers) who hadn’t yet dispensed with the bullshit they brought with them.