Moore reflects on first year as commander of ARPC

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Beth Anschutz
  • Air Reserve Personnel Center Public Affairs
BUCKLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. --  The end of May marked one year of command for Brig. Gen. Ellen Moore at the Air Reserve Personnel Center.
 
Today, Moore reflects on some of her initial goals and the positive strides the ARPC team has made within that time.

“I want to ensure I spend my time on the most important issues at ARPC. People come first and then the mission,” Moore said. “It is always a lot of work, but the people here are the best and that makes my job easy.”

One of the general’s goals was to make changes to ARPC’s part in the processing time for Air Force Reserve officer commission nominations.

The commissioning of every Air Force officer is based on an approved appointment for the specific grade in which the nominee is accessed. To ensure only qualified applicants are nominated, the Air Force implements a set of procedures to effectively and efficiently identify and review nominees. All nomination packages are processed through an approval chain that includes Headquarters Air Force, Secretary of Defense, Senate and the White House. This nomination and approval process is referred to as “scrolling.”

“One of my goals was to make changes at the grass roots level to improve scrolling,” Moore said. “Although we can’t work a legislative change here at the center, we did work with the Air Force Personnel Center and other organizations at Headquarters Air Force and Air Force Reserve Command levels to streamline the process and develop technological advances to assist the program.”

The ARPC accessions division is responsible for the consolidation of the Air Force Reserve officer nomination lists that are forwarded for approval through higher headquarters, said Lt. Col. Michael Masters, Chief of the accessions division. After identifying some inefficiencies, a Continuous Process Improvement team, made up of ARPC, AFPC, National Guard Bureau and Air Force Recruiting Service members, identified the need for a Total Force common operating system to aid in the routing and coordination of nominations. The ARPC accessions division also worked with the Directorate of Future Operations and Integrations (DPX) to develop an improved internal tracking system. The new tracking system helped Masters’ team cut their processing time in half.

Moore said another goal of hers was to revisit a manpower study done on the center in 2016 with the AFRC Manpower, Personnel and Services directorate’s Management Engineering Team.

The initial results of the study resulted in a loss of 35 positions to ARPC's manpower. Due to Moore's familiarity with the manpower process, from her previous position as AFRC Director of Manpower, Personnel and Services, and her current awareness of ARPC's mission and processes, she was in a unique position to review the study results with AFRC and ARPC leaders.

"ARPC has a unique structure. Even though I've been a customer of ARPC for years and worked with the center extensively for two years leading up to my assignment here, I was not aware of how much more we do," Moore said. "After the relook at the study, we earned a 180 percent increase!"

Moore also mentioned the new Virtual Personnel Center (vPC) Evaluation System as an achievement for the center during her first year in command. The ARPC DPX team along with Total Force partners developed the program to replace the current evaluations process in vPC after significant changes were made to the Enlisted Evaluation System in 2015. The new, more user-friendly automated program, has saved the Air Force more than $1 million and a year in development time. The program is currently being tested by the DPX team.

“We are looking forward to the launch of the new evaluation system and its benefits for the Total Force,” Moore said. “Everyone is working very hard to continuously move ARPC in a forward direction.”

The general said along with accomplishments came challenges in her first year at ARPC. One such challenge was obtaining funding for the command’s Developmental Teams.

“We were able to salvage our funding after a $315,000 loss in funding last year,” Moore said. “We believe the in-place Developmental Teams are a higher functioning group to vector our senior leaders for tomorrow.”

Moore has high hopes for ARPC in the future. She said ARPC customers should look forward to an eventual overhaul of the Active Guard Reserve (AGR) Review Board (ARB) with an increase in AGRs, as well as improvements to the Reserve Developmental Education Designation Board (RDEDB) process.

“I am very proud to be a part of this diverse, professional and skilled workforce,” Moore said. “ARPC has one of the strongest concentrations of experience and innovation in the Air Force and I feel so fortunate to work beside these skilled Airmen every day.”