Photo By Grace Robbins | Members of the U.S. Army Reserve liaison team, l-r: CW2 Julio Aguirre, Training &...... read more read more
There’s an old joke that begins with “how do you eat an elephant?” The punchline is “one bite at a time.” That question could be paraphrased for the U.S. Army Reserve data correctness campaign: how do you ensure the records of 200,000 Soldiers are correct—realizing that the consequences of incorrect records could mean late or even garnished pay or delayed promotions? The answer: one record at a time.
Typically it takes two hours to review an individual’s record for data correctness. Two hours per 200,000 Soldiers means 400,000 hours—or incredibly, 10,000 work weeks. Although this is a herculean task, the IPPS-A USAR liaison team, led by COL Frank Pfau, have strategically and systematically broken the project down into discrete, achievable activities.
“The data correctness campaign is a major effort to identify and correct data inconsistencies within every Soldier’s record,” said COL Pfau. “USAR’s data correctness efforts in legacy systems are rigorous and ongoing to set the foundation for IPPS-A’s pay, assignment and promotion capabilities.”
The goal of the data correctness campaign is to train HR professionals to accomplish two tasks: ensure Soldier records are correct, and train other HR professionals in their units to do the same. Divisions were initially selected to reach as many units as possible within that specific region. Typically, the data correctness team trains 12-15 HR professionals in eSRB (Electronic Soldier Record Brief) within the region. Data correctness information was also communicated during the USARC HRO bi-weekly calls. Some Geographic and Functional Commands reached to the USAR data correctness team requesting assistance.
The campaign consists of two-week site visits to each USAR command. USAR Soldiers CW4 Teresa Crowder, CW2 Karol Nevarez and CW2 Monette Madayag led the charge, completing nine of 12 planned site visits, or engagements, since June 2017. Their metric is to increase the command’s data correctness record review by 10 percent during each 2-week site visit. Criteria for improvements are completion of Personal Record Reviews (PRR) and updating Army Record Briefs (ARB). The first is a review of the Soldiers Official Military Personnel File (OMPF), looking for missing or duplicate documents and the second is a standardized snapshot of the Soldiers career used in promotion boards. Improvements at each command visited ranged between 10 and 12 percent as confirmed by CW4 Crowder’s spreadsheets and 1LT Karl Kling’s after-action analysis.
The USAR IPPS-A liaison team does the heavy lifting for each visit. For its part, the command needs to identify the human resources professionals who will take the training and provide a room big enough to put them and the computer equipment they’ll need. USAR pays for and coordinates the training, thanks to budgeting and scheduling efforts from MSG Jose Evaro and CW4 Crowder.
Then the on-the-ground work begins. After their eSRB training, the HR professionals are ready to review Soldiers’ ARBs, Financial Records Review (FRRs), and Personnel Record Reviews (PRRs) against documents in the Interactive Personnel Electronic Records Management System (iPERMS) as a crosscheck. The receiving command decides which of its units’ records are reviewed first, which are often fast-fight units or those whose data correctness campaigns are just beginning. Each HR professional has top-down access to their whole command, which means they may be reviewing records for a unit that isn’t necessarily their own.
For their part, Soldiers can prepare for migration to IPPS-A by reviewing their ARB (https://selfservice.rcms.usar.army.mil/SelfService/Home/CareerCenter/ARHome.aspx), iPERMS, and Leave and Earning Statement (LES) to ensure the information is accurate. If not, Soldiers should provide missing documentation to their Army Reserve Administrators or HR Professionals to be iPERMED.
After their two weeks with the IPPS-A team, the HR professionals are tasked with teaching their command colleagues how to review Soldier records for data correctness—the only realistic approach to accomplishing this massive effort. The IPPS-A USAR liaison team is working with OCAR to reach approximately 20 more commands. “The folks we have trained will go out and build their own teams,” said CW4 Crowder. “We’ll work until we are done.”
| Date Taken: | 04.12.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 04.12.2018 12:16 |
| Story ID: | 272802 |
| Location: | ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 527 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Data correctness campaign is like eating an elephant, by Grace Robbins, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
