Directorates combine forces to improve workplace

  • Published
  • By Mike Molina
  • ARPC Editor
DENVER --  Employees at the Air Reserve Personnel Center are proving that taking on more work doesn't always have to be painful. 

Officials in the Directorate of Personnel Program management recently agreed to take responsibility for updating Total Active Federal Military and Commission Service Dates for Air National Guardsmen and Air Force reservists in the Military Personnel Data Systems database. The servicemember's military personnel fl ight had previously been responsible for ensuring the information was in MILPDS. 

The new work could've meant tedious calculations by DPP technicians, but officials came up with a solution - improve the tools they were already using. "We decided to enhance the (Active Guard and Reserve) worksheet the technicians use by adding these two new dates," said Forrest Cupples, chief, Retirements Branch B. 

But adding the dates to the worksheet is more than just entering the information. 

Reservists and Guardsmen work intermittently, meaning their careers are not a single continuous tour. They may work a day, a weekend, a two-week tour or longer. Various start and end dates must be documented and precise calculations of their total service must be made to determine eligibility for retirement and other benefits. 

"We knew what we wanted but the programmers are the ones who made it happen," Mr. Cupples said. 

Like with many of the requests Roy Henkel and his fellow programmers in the Directorate of Personnel Data Systems receive, he knew only a little about the detailed work DPP technicians provide. 

"It's a systematic process," he said. "If you're building something like this you have to try and look at it from the user's perspective as well as a developer." 

After several modifications and working with users, the worksheet, complete with calculations of the new dates, was finished. "It saves us time and helps with our accuracy," Mr. Cupples said. "If we were doing this by hand, there's always a greater chance for error." 

And as work continues to change, ARPC's programmers are always ready to help. 

"If six months from now they need modification, we'll sit with them to get it taken care of," Mr. Henkel said. "We depend on users to do acceptance testing and tell us what they need."