Photo By Spc. Kianna Scott | From left to right: Ki Sang Yi, Army Military Pay Office Korea Debt Management and...... read more read more
In South Korea, the leaves aren’t the only things changing as the U.S. Army’s military pay mission there transitioned from military to civilians for the first time.
Officially heralding in this new era of military pay support, the U.S. Army Financial Management Command, headquartered out of Indianapolis, opened a new Army Military Pay Office during a special ribbon cutting ceremony at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, Oct. 31.
The new AMPO’s main office is located on Camp Humphreys, and it will also support Soldiers at two satellite locations at Camps Walker and Casey.
“This was a huge event for everyone here as military pay was historically handled by military green-suiters here,” said Patty White, AMPO Korea director. “Transitions aren’t easy, but our team is up for the challenge because they understand the importance of their job and how it affects Soldier morale, readiness and families.”
Driving this change are the Army’s reorganization efforts to better align its forces for near-peer competition. To do so, the Army directed a Force Design Update Jr. that removed the military pay mission from the 176th Financial Management Support Unit in South Korea at the end of Fiscal Year 2023.
“Through the Army’s restructuring, our Corps is now aligned with our doctrine in FM 4-80 that establishes two core competencies for our military, which are finance operations and resource management,” said Col. Michelle M. Williams, USAFMCOM commander. “Military pay is no longer a core competency of the finance Soldier – that mission now resides with USAFMCOM.”
But this transition provides far more benefits to Soldiers and their families stationed in South Korea than just doctrinal alignment.
“Both our Army civilian and our Korean national employees have such dedication to supporting Soldiers and their families while improving operational readiness by ensuring timely and accurate pay so those Soldiers can focus on their mission,” said Mary Jelev, USAFMCOM Military Pay Operations director, who presided over the ribbon cutting.
“They provide the continuity, but also standardization with the rest of the AMPO network,” Jelev continued. “They now also have the ability as part of USAFMCOM to reach back and get resources, knowledge and insight from our entire network.”
The handful of General Schedule employees in the AMPO are Army veterans, so they bring with them the experience of serving in uniform, while the rest of the AMPO is made up of Korean nationals in the Army’s Korean Service Corps Battalion.
“The KSC was traditionally a very blue-collar workforce with roles like mechanics and construction, but Korea is starting to make some of those positions more administrative and white-collar in nature; it really was perfect timing,” said Jason Podzemny, USAFMCOM MPO Support Division manager. “It’s going to take us some time to teach our KSCs everything, but they really are one of the most professional and customer-service-oriented workforces in the world, and that will benefit our Soldiers directly.”
“We’re improving a lot, and overall my team is adjusting really well to the job,” added White. “We might need a little patience for the first six months, but we are going to be in a far better situation with military pay here than we’ve ever been before.”
The transition of military pay from Soldiers to civilians is one that started more than 30 years ago when the Defense Finance and Accounting Service took over military pay operations in the Continental United States.
While that mission eventually transitioned back to Army civilians under USAFMCOM in 2020, military pay in South Korea and Europe was still handled by finance Soldiers, despite them no longer receiving formal training for it at the doctrinally-aligned U.S. Army Finance and Comptroller School.
“Anybody that's done military pay before knows that in order to be really proficient in it, it’s a lifelong learning process with constant updates,” said Podzemny, who is a retired finance sergeant major. “Just understanding the nuances of [overseas housing allowance] is something in itself that takes years to learn through experience and regulation research.”
While it can be complex, the biggest issue for the Army’s military pay mission in South Korea was turnover.
“With all their wartime requirements and training exercises, we only got a couple of months of actual military pay work out of them before they were training the next Soldier to replace them,” said Podzemny.
“With Soldiers, they always have other things going on with other missions, going to the field and additional duties, which affects the operation,” added White, who also serves as an Army Reserve major. “With steady civilian support, you’ve got continuity.”
That’s not to say the Soldiers of the now-deactivated 176th FMSU didn’t do everything in their power to provide exceptional support to Soldiers in South Korea.
“They did the absolute best they could and made every effort to try to learn their job on the move,” said Podzemny. “The fact that you had Soldiers who never were trained on military pay that were able to sustain the mission in a warm theater with rotational forces is a testament to their dedication to take care of their fellow Soldiers.”
Despite the best of intentions, that telephone-game method of training led to military pay being out of synch with current Army policies.
“A lot of documentation was outdated,” recalled Podzemny. “We constantly update guidance letters, and our AMPOs are constantly getting audited by USAFMCOM’s Network Audit and Field Compliance Division.”
Slowly over the years, despite best efforts by the Soldiers working military pay on the peninsula, this led to large discrepancies, which added up and caused both frustration and auditing issues.
With the new AMPO, the days of paper copies are gone, according to Jelev. New electronic submission boxes were created along with additional routing lists in the Integrated Pay and Personnel System – Army so that the old work could still be done, but a clean start could occur.
They are also fully implementing USAFMCOM’s military pay policies, which means better standardization, accountability and ease-of-use for Soldiers.
“We're also making sure that we're establishing record retention and key supporting documents for audit,” added Jelev.
In order to pull this off, USAFMCOM leaders said they couldn’t have done it on their own and received tremendous support from both the military and Army civilians in South Korea to ensure a smooth transition.
USAFMCOM worked directly with Eighth Army and USAG Humphreys to extend the deadline of the transfer to the end of FY24 and allow USAFMCOM to establish the civilian-staffed AMPO and ensure no lapse in the military mission.
Additionally, after the key departures leading up to the 176th FMSU’s deactivation in September, there was a loss the manpower necessary to make the transition happen.
“We made an assessment, based on what we saw, that if we were to transition as is, there would be a significant amount of impact to Soldiers, including the historical cases that needed to be worked as well as the workload that was currently sitting in the office,” recalled Podzemny, who oversaw the transition.
“So, we reached out to the 19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command, and not only did they offer us great support, they offered to provide us up to 20 personnel to get things transferred and agreed to extend the full transition date to Oct. 31,” he added. “That allowed us to do a lot of clean up and ensure that pay cases were appropriately tracked and closed.”
While the military pay mission, focused on Soldier pay, is now separate from the military finance mission, focused on finance operations and disbursing, it doesn’t mean they are fully divorced from each other.
“We are tied at the hip, because of the cash mission that has to happen like with advances for [cost of living allowance] and all of the other cash requirements,” explained the former sergeant major. “The AMPO will process the entitlement, and then, Delta Company, 125th Finance Battalion, will be dispersing the physical cash.”
With AMPO Korea now at full operating capability, the MPO director said she’s already seeing how the office could soon lead the way in military pay for the entire Army.
“Our employees are so dedicated to the needs of the Soldiers and wanting to learn and improve processes, they are quickly becoming experts,” explained Jelev. “I can see them becoming a site that helps us innovate in the future because they want to do better and they are just so focused on the Soldiers.”
That said, those employees are still learning, and USAFMCOM leadership is requesting feedback from the Soldiers in South Korea.
“After you submit a ticket for help, if for some reason you don’t see any movement on it for a week, please reach out because all these processes are new and things are bound to happen,” concluded Podzemny. “Please provide feedback to our ICE boxes, whether good or bad, because that'll help us determine where we need to continue to make tweaks to make things better.”
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USAFMCOM delivers precision enterprise-wide financial operations to integrate, synchronize and sustain the battlefield through the Joint Strategic Support Area. The two-star major subordinate command to the U.S. Army Materiel Command also directly supports the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller in their role as the principal advisor on all matters related to financial management and comptrollership.
USAFMCOM’s MPO performs the installation-level military support for the Army across the United States, Japan and Korea by managing 36 AMPOs and 14 satellite offices at 50 locations.
U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys is the “Army’s Home in Korea” and is located along the western coast of South Korea within the seaport city of Pyeongtaek, approximately 40 miles south of Seoul. Camp Humphreys is the headquarters for the 8th U.S. Army, the 2nd Infantry Division, the Army’s most active airfield in the Pacific, and the hub of U.S. Forces Korea.
| Date Taken: | 11.07.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 11.07.2024 22:00 |
| Story ID: | 484913 |
| Location: | INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 24 |
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This work, AMPO opens as MilPay in Korea transitions to USAFMCOM, by Mark Orders-Woempner, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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