Photo By Frank O'Brien | The Road to IPPS-A! Participants from the IPPS-A user jury at Fort Indiantown Gap,...... read more read more
Soldiers from all three Components gathered in Pennsylvania to conduct user juries to test the functionality of the Integrated Personnel and Pay System - Army (IPPS-A) which is scheduled to replace the Standard Installation and Division Personnel Reporting System (SIDPERS) in the spring of 2018.
Pennsylvania volunteered to be the first test state of the multi-phase technology modernization roll-out effort and will be followed by Maryland, West Virginia, Michigan, Arizona and Alaska in 2018. SIDPERS, in various forms, has been used by the Army Reserve (USAR) and Army National Guard (ARNG) for personnel record management since the 1980s. The system change will initially impact thousands of Soldiers and eventually the entire Army by 2020.
“I’m a big believer in this system,” said LTC Cooper, G-1 for the Pennsylvania ARNG, about IPPS-A. “Can’t wait to see it rolled out.”
A user jury is a method for collecting feedback while Soldiers perform frequent and high-priority tasks using IPPS-A. After testing, Soldiers participated in focus groups to provide user experience data with regards to system capabilities and functions.
During its implementation, IPPS-A will transform the U.S. Army’s industrial-age personnel system to a 21st century talent management system. It will subsume over 45 legacy systems, eliminate 300 interfaces, and reduce 154 business processes to 34.
CW4 Louis Burge is a liaison between the state Army National Guards and the project team in Arlington, Va., who helped bring together all the jury members for the test.
“We’re conducting the releases in phases,” said CW4 Burge. “The strategy is to mass on one state, do training, and carry out personnel updates and data conversion. We’re looking at about April 2018 to do limited user tests for the entire state of Pennsylvania…We don’t want to deploy IPPS-A during hurricane season. After an approval for the limited fielding decision, then we can roll out to the rest of the state. SIDPERS servers will be browned out.”
“Browning out” is the period of time when SIDPERS will remain available as a backup system before being permanently retired.
User jury members included ARNG Soldiers from: Pennsylvania, Alabama, California, Hawaii, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the National Guard Bureau and the Adjutant General school at Fort Jackson, S.C.
CW5 Jay Vincent, Senior Personnel Advisor, Massachusetts ARNG, was optimistic about Soldiers from multiple states being exposed to IPPS-A for the first time.
“We’re exposing a wide range of the Guard to IPPS-A,” said CW5 Vincent. “It’s generating buzz.”
“This is something the Army has been waiting on for a long time. This is how the training is going to happen. Most everyone here has never seen IPPS-A before…they’re seeing it for the first time, and the user jury is the venue to ask and answer the question: ‘How is this going to work?’” CW5 Vincent added.
CW5 Vincent praised the intuitiveness of IPPS-A and was confident that the move away from SIDPERS would be embraced by the Army National Guard. He highlighted recent changes to the DTS (Defense Travel System) and EES (Evaluation Entry System).
Said CW5 Vincent, “People will ask: ‘How did I live so long with that thing?’ Nobody likes change, but they’ll get to the point where they’ll ask: ‘Why did we ever use SIDPERS?’”
Initial responses from the user jury members were positive.
“Everything was easy…like it was spelled out for you,” said SFC Rene Castilleja, a Kansas ARNG Soldier with the 891st Engineering Battalion.
“It’s hard to believe all the systems we use are going to be able to fit into just six little tiles,” said SGM Karen Boatright, South Carolina ARNG, 263rd Army Air Missile Defense Command, when looking at the IPPS-A home page for the first time.
SFC Eric Wunder, Pennsylvania ARNG, 328th Brigade Support Element, was excited. “I’m ready to get into the nuts and bolts. Ready to move things around,” said SFC Wunder.
According to William Shouse, user jury facilitator, the roll-out of IPPS-A will include 40 hours of distance learning training for HR professionals followed by 40 hours of hands-on training. The roll-out is being conducted incrementally first with one unit, then one state, then additional ARNG states. Following successful implementation with the ARNG, IPPS-A is projected to subsume other systems including some MyPay functions.
“As the system grows and matures, we will be rolling out additional permissions,” said Shouse.
One of the benefits of the user jury was identifying technical issues such as common access card certification congruity that couldn’t be replicated back in Virginia. In addition, concerns unique to the National Guard were identified. Some state national guards use the number of miles a Soldier is willing to travel to drill when considering promotions. Some states make the decision based on regions. Reconciling the mileage vs. regional decision is a policy decision that must be referred to and resolved in coordination with the National Guard Bureau.
“We’re learning a lot from the Pennsylvania National Guard,” said MAJ Erica Miller, IPPS-A Functional Management Division, Design and Development Support Branch Chief. “The more Soldiers get a chance to do hands on training with IPPS-A, the more they love it. Their feedback – the user experience – is essential for us to make the system work…make it intuitive.”
User juries and testing will continue into 2018.
“Second Brigade in the western part of the state by Pittsburgh will be the primary testers,” said Pennsylvania ARNG CPT Michael Janze, 213th Regional Support Group, one of the jurors. “It will go live state-wide one week later. The state is planning for a blackout period on personnel actions while we launch. There may be bumps in the road, but my role is to make it as successful as possible.”
To learn more about IPPS-A, the Army's future online HR, Pay and Talent Management solution to provide integrated capabilities across all Army Components, visit http://www.IPPS-A.army.mil. Specific questions about the program can be addressed to: usarmy.pentagon.hqda-ipps-a.mbx.ipps-a@mail.mil. Latest IPPS-A updates are posted on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram at: facebook.com/armyippsa, youtube.com/c/IPPSA, and @usarmy_ippsa
| Date Taken: | 04.13.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 04.17.2018 15:15 |
| Story ID: | 273038 |
| Location: | FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, PA, US |
| Web Views: | 452 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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