It should simplify life for military members. One example St. Claire used was a service member's promotion. Today, a personnel specialist puts that record into the personnel system and then a pay specialist has to put the pertinent information into the pay system. With the new system, this is done once.
"Service members today very often spend a lot of their time baby-sitting their records," St. Claire said. "The ones who know enough about how personnel systems work, know enough to keep their own personal copies of everything, then they have to go around to make sure the systems reflect what they've got in it."
The records will be online and will have security protection. Service members will be able to access their records online, and if they see errors will be able to report those immediately.
Navy Capt. Valerie E. Carpenter, the joint program manager for the system, said the new system will make it much easier for service members to see what's in -- or not in -- their records. "They won't have to request a microfiche, or a hard copy," she said.
The Army will be the first user, with an initial operations capability set for November 2005. "The services will be doing what we call data-cleansing; they will bring in the data they currently have, and it will go into the common database," Carpenter said.
The system is the result of a recommendation the Defense Science Board made in the mid-1990s. Most companies had integrated their pay and personnel systems, and the board felt the military should also. Officials said they expect some savings from eliminating duplicative systems.
