Army Medicine continues to improve after $10 million savings

UNITED STATES

02.22.2018

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Medical Command

Army Medicine continues to improve after $10 million savings
By Damon Collier, Management Analyst, MEDCOM Business Office

The current Service Contract Review Board (SCARB) process has reduced the Army Medicine headquarters contract cost by 27 percent or $10 million in FY17, but the current process is a cumbersome, labor intensive process, that is completely paper-based, dependent on manual consolidation of information, and solely reliant on email as its data repository.

That was until the Army Medicine Business Office was tasked with developing an automated process to expedite the SCARB process with an external (SharePoint) data repository, while improving overall efficiencies (speed of delivery) in the One Staff.

The Service Contract Review Board (SCARB) is an executive management tool used to identify, review, assess, and validate service contract requirements that allows Army Medicine to comply with audit findings, quantify financial support of the campaign plan, and ensure submission compliancy between headquarters and the Contracting Offices in support of Service Acquisitions.

After a year of planning, developing, and testing an automated process that would not only fall within Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) use standards, use Sharepoint as its data platform, and comply with future WIN 10 upgrades, the result is the Automated SCARB (AUTOSCARB) application.

This application is an automated, easy-to-use application that can be used by all One Staff customers and stakeholders who have a role in creating, reviewing, and approving service contracts, per Federal Acquisition Register (FAR) 7.502. Use of the AUTOSCARB will decrease processing times by eliminating paper packets and create transparency of operations by giving customers and leaders a real-time view of comments and provide ease in making corrections to SCA packets.

Per MEDCOM OPORD 18-30, all new SCA packets must be entered in the AUTOSCARB Management Information System (MIS), beginning Mar. 1. The SCA Team in the Business Office will no longer take paper packets after Apr. 30.

The AUTOSCARB application will be ready for use by the One Staff in mid-February 2018 however, it will not be mandated for use for all the One Staff until March 1, 2018 after all user training is complete.

To date, hands-on training on the test application has been conducted for all user roles at the DHHQ during the week of Jan. 29 through Feb. 2 and at JBSA from Feb. 5 – 9.

For more information on the AUTOSCARB, to gain access to the application, or to get training, please send an email to the following groupbox: USARMY JB San Antonio MEDCOM Mailbox MEDCOM BO SCARB - [e-mail].

• Date Taken: 02.22.2018
• Date Posted: 02.22.2018 10:21
• Story ID: 266809
• Location: US