Gerald H. Gaskins, Lieutenant Colonel, USMC
“We need to look at those functions that Marines perform
in the supporting establishment and ask ourselves how many of
those functions can be out-sourced. My goal is to return
as many of our Marines as possible to the operating forces.”
James L. Jones
Commandant of the Marine Corps
Personnel administration processes in the Marine Corps changed
very little since I came on active duty in 1981. There
are some changes; direct deposit, email, but overall the actual
mechanics to affect my personal record is pretty much the same;
paper intensive; manual processing; multiple layers of management
oversight; and slow reaction time from start through execution
and feedback. This is under normal conditions by being
physically co-located with an operational unit with a personnel
administration department. However, on several occasions,
my career assignments were remote from my parent unit and I
had to conduct my personnel administration business by driving
miles for even the most routine administrative tasks.
This is done at the expense of my duty time and inconvenience.
This situation is not uncommon when you consider the multitude
of assignments for individuals in our recruiting commands; Military
Officer and Enlisted Instructors at the universities; embassy
and deployed Marines. In most cases, Marines will forego
maintenance of their record in a timely manner in favor of accumulating
transactions for input at a later date when it is more convenient.
The condition I just described adversely affects the state
of readiness in the Marine Corps. Some would say, that
this is an exaggeration, however, if you think about it, the
role of personnel administration is significant in the state
of morale and welfare of the individual Marine. If a Marine
is not totally centered on his duties due to failures or frustrations
in the personnel administration processing then his mind is
not on his primary duties.
Few of us have ever gone through our careers without experiencing
some form of pay or personnel problems in their record.
Whether it is the improper handling of a travel claim through
misinterpretation of handwriting or oversight. This is not to
imply that our personnel administration is incompetent, however,
it does question whether we are providing our administrators
and commanders the ‘best’ tools they need to support the Marine.
I’m convinced we have not. This is what the Total Force
Administration System is all about. Getting the best resources
to the service provider to provide the best service possible.
At first, the civilian corporate environment improved personnel
administration services to influence the company’s bottom line
‘profit’. The fewer people it takes to provide administrative
service support meant that those resources could be diverted
to producing a better core product. But then as the corporation
got leaner through personnel cuts, Human Resource Managers examined
the direct effect of attitudes on productivity. The obvious
conclusion is that good personnel administration contributes
to making the employee feel more attached and committed to his/her
organization. Though not necessarily concerned about profitability,
Marines are concerned about efficiency, productivity, retention,
and motivation and the heart of all of these issues is personnel
administration.
TFAS seeks to bring the Marine Corps personnel administration
to a “world class” level by integrating the newest available
information technology to our existing systems. But the
final solution is not in just technical improvements, it also
improving the organizational structure through a comprehensive
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) review. This parallel
process (Technical development & BPR) is what ‘sets up’
TFAS as a textbook “How to” Information Technology (IT) program
in the development of an Automated Information System.
The Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996 (ITMRA)
is explicit to Federal Agencies preceding the decision to invest
in information technology. The IT solution must support
the work processes that have been “simplified or otherwise redesigned
to reduce costs, improve effectiveness, and make maximum use
of commercial off-the-shelf technology.” The ITRMA encourages
that management should reengineer business processes first,
then search for acquisition alternatives.
Currently, most Marine Corps personnel administration processes
are manually inputted into a unique closed system by a designated
Marine or civilian (Unit Diary Clerk, Administrator, Mail Clerk,
Disbursing etc…). Personnel data transactions are processed
through the Marine Corps Total Force System (MCTFS) via the
On-Line Diary System (OLDS) and the Unit Diary/Marine Integrated
Personnel System (UD/MIPS). This system currently handles
over 15 million transactions per year. Although, these
systems are dated, they are well maintained, upgraded regularly
and reliable, however, the system experiences high vulnerability
in data quality because of the middle-man (administrator) interface
(erroneous entry) and low visibility to the data by the affected
individual. Again, the service we provide our Marines
is good, however, it is not the best we can do under the current
IT alternatives offering improved capability and available in
the commercial market.
TFAS began with a comprehensive review of the business processes
by expert Marines and civilian administrators. This team
is called the Quality Leadership Board and sponsored by the
Deputy Commandant, Manpower & Reserve Affairs. For
the past year, their mission was to define and examine all of
the Marine Corps personnel administrative processes and objectively
analyze where and how improvements can be made to the system.
These administrators were motivated by the fact that their community
was subjected to an immediate reduction of over 1000 Marine
administrators to the overall structure and the impending challenge
to reduce even further in the near future. The main emphasis
being to not reduce the Marine Corps end strength but to comply
with the Commandant’s objective to “…return as many of our Marines
as possible to the operating forces.” The BPR began by
identifying:
a. existing processes
b. existing organizational structure
c. personnel administration best practices
d. cost/benefit analysis
e. technological alternatives
The results confirmed that the Marine Corps personnel processes
are too labor intensive best evident by the Marine personnel
administrator ratio of 22:1 verses the civilian industry average
of 100:1; and the lack of readily accessible information to
the individual Marine interference with overall system quality.
The hallmark of the TFAS system is to improve the existing system
quality by (1) reducing the personnel administrator interface;
(2) increasing the individual accessibility to data; (3) and
promote self-service. The technological solution will,
therefore, support this effort to incorporate these recommendations
into viable alternatives maximizing the use of commercially
available technology. TFAS is not a replacement for MCTFS,
OLDS and UD/MIPS, it is an enhancement by developing and integrating
a new IT capability within the Marine Corps system. Technology
such as web based applications; Graphical User Interfaces (GUI);
Computer Telephony (CT); Interactive Voice Response (IVR); Smart
Card; Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and other commercial-off-the-shelf
(COTS) systems make TFAS a plausible ‘today’ reality rather
than a ‘towards the future’ initiative. These technologies
are relatively new but proven and are incorporated in the most
sophisticated Human Resource Management departments in the largest
corporate offices in the nation. These systems combined
will provide the typical Marine the capability to access their
personal records (Payroll, Record Book, Performance Evaluations;
Assignments, etc…) via telephone and internet connection and
operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Here is a brief overview of the self-service technologies
currently under consideration for TFAS:
Interactive Voice Response (IVR): The best description for
this technology is a “voice computer.” The IVR is activated
via telephone and uses prerecorded voice commands stored on
a hard drive with synthesized voice responses for feedback to
the caller. The synthesized voice actually reads digitized
text in the main computer and converts that information to speech.
The reading capability of the voice synthesizer is virtually
unlimited. However, the system is limited in the caller’s
ability to remember the voice commands necessary to access the
information. This means that voice commands must be configured
in a manner that uses as few execution terms as possible to
access the most commonly preferred information.
Computer Telephony (CT): CT is similar to IVR from the perspective
that activation is via the telephone. CT is much more
sophisticated but not necessarily a substitute for IVR.
The purpose of the CT is to manage and integrate telephone calls
into/out a computer system. CT is particularly important
to increase the productivity of personnel using the computer
system in environments such as a call center where a caller
needs more specific information unobtainable via an IVR or other
systems. Without going into very much detail, this technology
adds “intelligence” to any system by not only identifying the
caller to the service provider but also assisting in search
for the specific information even before a connection is made
between the two people (caller & Service representative)
and the start of their conversation. CT capability today
indicates that it has almost unlimited potential in the interaction
of telephone to computer transaction processing.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI): This is a system that contains
secure signatures or certificates formatted in an algorithm.
The more common association is the magnetic strip along the
back of your credit or ATM cards. The strip maintains
the signature and confirms that authenticity of the user for
gaining access to the system. The two main limitations
of PKI are that it is only capable of handling a low volume
of information and the durability.
Smart Card: Often people confuse Smart Card and Public Key
Infrastructure cards. A Smart card is a credit card sized
device that contains a microprocessor, memory and a battery.
It is essentially a small database and personalized into any
configuration to handle private and other sensitive information.
Smart Cards can even contain commands to activate other systems.
The best feature of the Smart card is that its individualized
processor is almost tamper resistant. The potential application
to TFAS is that as Smart Card technology proliferates throughout
the IT environment in other personal applications such as personal
banking operations, this technology will be instantly applicable
to other systems within TFAS such as CT.
The Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM), via the
Program Manager, Information Systems, recently assumed responsibility
for the technical Program Management of TFAS. The
technologies described are just some of the systems that will
be examined for consideration in the ultimate final solution.
During this initial phase extensive research will be conducted
into the availability and feasibility of all potential applications
in the development of legitimate alternatives. No one
application provides the ultimate solution as a stand-alone
system. Each has their advantages and limitations.
SYSCOM’s goal is to analyze the integration of these technologies
and determine the best combination for implementation that is
affordable, maintainable, reliable and meets the needs of the
individual Marine. But one factor is certain to remain constant
in any solution and that is securing the system the most it
can possibly be in the Internet environment.
With the development of electronic banking applications
over the World Wide Web the market is proliferating with Secure
Electronic Transaction (SET) protocols and encryption standards.
Although, each of the technologies described provide their own
inherent level of security, the final solution has to guarantee
an additional level of security to our Marines that their transactions
or personal data is not vulnerable to manipulation by unauthorized
sources. Common sense leads you to the conclusion of how
our personalized information can be manipulated to our detriment
and the types of legitimate and illegitimate agencies willing
to exploit this information. Currently, each of us conducts
transactions via the Internet without much regard to the level
of security of the vendor. Just recently an Internet company’s
seemingly secure customer credit card file was hacked, downloaded
and held for ransom. The Internet company refused to pay
and the extorter released the information to the general public.
The Marine can be assured that TFAS will be secured with
as much redundancy as reasonable. This is why we are not
going to move too hastily to implement a commercial solution
based on one’s opinion that there are institutions already operating
the type system we need. Our system, whatever it may be,
is going be developed under a higher standard especially in
terms of the level of protection committed to the privacy of
our Marine.
General Jones’ guidance, is the impetus behind the Marine
Corps concept for TFAS. Even without this explicit guidance,
advances in information technology alone makes the move in this
direction inevitable. It is necessary that we take the
time and resources and efficiently distribute them where they
provide the best level of productivity. TFAS will: (1)
reduce the number of Marines necessary for assignment to the
administrator military occupational specialty; (2) increase
the accessibility of the Marines personal record via multiple
IT sources; (3) provide a secure means of conduct for personal
administrative services; (4) provide commanders in garrison
and in the field a better capability to monitor and assist Marines;
(5) allow the individual Marine more responsibility through
self-service tools for the quality maintenance of his/her personal
record; (6) will improve the speed and quality of personal administration
transactions.
About the author: Lieutenant Colonel Gaskins is the Project
Officer for TFAS and assigned to the Marine Corps Systems Command,
within the Program Manager, Information Systems, Business Information
Systems Division at Quantico, Virginia.
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