WASHINGTON -- A new Web-based system will integrate all of the services' military personnel and pay systems, DoD officials announced on September 29 (2003). The Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System will provide "one-stop shopping" for service members when it is fully implemented.
Officials said the new system will be more accurate and make it easier for active duty and reserve component service members to check on their records. Phase 2 of the contract, awarded to Northrop-Grumman, will run about $281 million. The system will use commercial-off-the-shelf technology developed by PeopleSoft, an enterprise software company based in Pleasanton, Calif. The license to use the software is at $48 million.
"This is a big deal," David Chu, defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness, said. "I'm told this is the largest application of PeopleSoft suite in the world. We're pioneers here. Its functionality is very important to the department's long-term success."
Chu said that although the drive for the system preceded the current administration, it is very much in the spirit of transformation promulgated by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The system will absorb the 79 "legacy" systems into one Web-based system accessible to all who need to view those records, including the service members themselves.
The system will provide better, more accurate and more timely information for service members and warfighters, officials said. The system will allow combatant commanders "to have much better visibility over what is ultimately the most important resource they have: their people," Chu said.
Accurate, timely information also is important to service members. "There have been press stories in the past about service men and women who get lost in the system, who don't receive timely and accurate pay and benefits and who can't document where they were in military operations so they can get benefits for service-related medical conditions," Norma J. St. Claire said. "DIMHRS will truly transform military personnel and pay management for the department." St. Claire is the director of DoD's Joint Requirements and Integration Office.
Military personnel management is far more complex and far-reaching that personnel management in the private sector, she said. "We have the responsibility of following our service members from the moment they enter the military essentially for the rest of their lives," she said. What complicates military records is that service members transfer between the active and reserve components, and, today, that also often means reserve mobilization with concurrent duty overseas.
The system will create a single record of service for each service member that will follow the service member. The records also will be used by the Department of Veterans Affairs after the service member leaves the military, officials said.
