Integrated system to enhance personnel, pay processes

  • Published
  • By Chuck Paone
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  After more than a year and a half of rigorous planning, the team working to acquire the new Air Force Integrated Personnel and Pay System (AF-IPPS) is confident the program's on the right track and prepared to move toward a summer request for proposal.

The AF-IPPS team held a very successful industry day in late April attended by 128 people from 62 different companies, according to Elizabeth Payne, AF-IPPS business operations specialist.

At the industry day, Mark Doboga, Air Force director of Plans and Integration for Manpower and Personnel, said that the AF-IPPS initiative will move the Air Force forward to a truly integrated personnel and pay environment for the Guard, Reserve and active-duty personnel. The new system will provide a common way of doing business for all components.

During opening remarks, Program Manager Tom Davenport welcomed industry and encouraged partnership.

"We look forward to working with you to foster an environment of cooperation and innovation," he said. He also noted that this was the latest interaction with industry. It follows release of AF-IPPS requirements documents and multiple Requests for Information designed to enhance Air Force awareness of industry interest and capabilities related to the program.

The industry day highlighted the importance of the extensive business process re-engineering that has been accomplished by the Personnel and Finance functional communities over the past three years. The program management team told attendees that information technology solutions, specifically the proven ability to develop large enterprise resource planning systems, are important. However, it's even more important, they said, to understand the Air Force's pay and personnel business processes and ensure that proposed solutions enable the Air Force military personnel and pay business to succeed.

The Electronic Systems Center acquisition team has spent a lot of time deciphering those processes, Ms. Payne said. She also noted that AF-IPPS has benefitted from the work done under the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, or DIMHRS, which had been DoD's attempt to consolidate all military services onto one personnel system.

"Unlike most programs, we've mapped out all the business processes in advance," she said. "A successful bidder will need to do more than just ensure the software works; they'll have to know those business processes and how to build and maintain an ERP system around them."

The AF-IPPS system will require approximately 115 distinct interfaces to consolidate all the existing systems, subsystems and feeds currently used to handle all aspects of military personnel and compensation.

In the end, users will have "24/7 access to everything they need from anywhere in the world," Ms. Payne said.

AF-IPPS will significantly reduce manual transactions, improve pay timeliness (97 percent vs. 93 percent now), and provide a dramatic reduction in "pay cases."

Those pay issues requiring resolution currently number 85,000 a year, most arising because of the split between the current military personnel system and its main pay database. With the new, integrated system, those cases should be reduced by about 75 percent, program managers predict.

The new system will also solve the numerous problems associated with maintaining aging legacy systems and will meet security requirements that those systems cannot.

A major step before going out for bids in August is to complete the ongoing Functional Requirements Forum, which began in April and will conclude in June. The forum, being conducted in San Antonio, Texas, is validating requirements with Air Force personnel and pay specialists to ensure the system will meet their needs.

"We're going to know, and our industry partners are going to know, exactly what we need the system to do before they begin to build it," Ms. Payne said.

The team anticipates a summer 2012 contract award date. From there, they expect the system to be delivered in 12-to-18-month increments, with the first focused on handling leave. The entire system should be fully functioning by fall of 2016.