Photo By Mauricio Campino | Senior Airman Mona Gorung, 436th Comptroller Squadron budget analyst, updates budget...... read more read more
Subscribe
This year, COVID-19 brought many aspects of life on base to a halt. Social distancing, minimal manning and teleworking mandates introduced obstacles to everyday work tasks. For some, life may have seemed to pause, but the mission of the 436th Airlift Wing’s comptroller squadron never stopped.
The 436th CPTS is responsible for funds accounting and budget planning, programming, execution and analysis. The combined staff of 29 Airmen and six civilians provide customer service, to include financial training and education, to all wing and tenant units. The squadron also supports Air Mobility Command’s worldwide mobility requirements through funds disbursement, travel order processing and deployment of personnel.
When COVID-19 hit, it brought with it a whole new set of challenges. Minimal manning and teleworking mandates meant customers could no longer simply come to the office with paper copies of important documents required for pay changes, separations, travel orders, etc. All these documents now had to be digitized and encrypted to protect personal identifiable information. Each and every step taken to audit and certify documents became a new email transaction, so office visits that typically lasted 10-15 minutes became email messages that spanned several days.
“All of a sudden, we go from pre-COVID, 10 emails a day, to 30-50 emails a day,” said Airman Justin Holt, 436th CPTS financial management technician.
Handling this much new data posed its own problems. Converting a typical file folder of 200 sheets of paper into a PDF document often created a digital document too large to send over a single email message, so it had to be segmented into multiple emails.
Often financial budgeting relies heavily on multiple sections accessing and updating shared files and folders. Attempting to do this remotely from home using a virtual proxy network was not always reliable.
“We typically have our financial spreadsheets open all the time, constantly updating dollar amounts,” said Senior Airman Mona Gorung, 436th CPTS budget analyst.
Systems issues were worked through the squadron’s IT representative. The staff found the best way to avoid issues was to perform certain tasks during specific hours, when fewer employees were logged into the Air Force virtual private network. Implementing new ways to stay in touch with coworkers and supervisors helped everyone stay on task.
“We used Zoom, Teams and the 436th Comptroller Facebook page to host commander’s roll calls, mandatory meetings, training and promote morale,” said Senior Master Sgt. Warrell Shanklin, 436th CPTS superintendent.
The flight chief overseeing customer operations created a schedule to allow Airmen to come into the office to perform any tasks that could not be accomplished remotely. This allowed Airmen to release payments to ensure members of Team Dover were paid in a timely manner.
The 436th CPTS chant is “Nothing goes ‘till the money flows.” This year, COVID-19 brought a lot of challenges, but through innovation, communication and determination, the Airmen and civilian staff of the 436th CPTS have found ways to keep the money flowing to ensure the AMC mission was accomplished.
| Date Taken: | 08.17.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 08.17.2020 13:55 |
| Story ID: | 376168 |
| Location: | US, DELAWARE, US |
| Web Views: | 71 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, 436th CPTS conquers challenges during COVID-19 pandemic, by Mauricio Campino, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
