Air Force personnel services migration under way

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Steve Grever
  • Air Force Personnel, Services and Manpower Public Affairs
RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFNS) --  Air Force technicians migrated the first component of the Air Force Personnel Services website to the Defense Information Systems Agency's Enterprise Computing Center Feb. 23 to 27.

This is the first phase in centralizing all total-force personnel services and creating a single access platform for all active duty, Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve, civilian and retiree personnel, said Tim Beyland, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services.

"The personnel services website will deliver a global 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week total-force personnel service capability providing integrated, standardized platforms that are easy to use and access," Mr. Beyland said. "The Air Force is committed to ensuring all Airmen are prepared to access and use modernized personnel services."

After the migration, total-force members will see increased performance and decreased Web page loading times from the new personnel website because of DISA's robust infrastructure and redundant hosting platforms.

"DISA's web hosting services will provide us with a significant increase in bandwidth availability and other infrastructure optimizations that will help us provide a better user experience for every total force member," said Tim Thomas, the Air Force Personnel Center's knowledge management division chief.

All active duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian Airmen can create an account at https://gum.afpc.randolph.af.mil to log into the personnel services website using their common access card or a login name and password. Once they have an account created, they will be able to access personnel services, applications and information from home or any military computer.

Airmen accessing the information from some personal-use Web browsers may need to download Department of Defense root certificates at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/announcements/dodrootcertificates.html if they are having difficulties accessing the personnel services website.

"In the past, Airmen could only access human resources knowledge and applications through the military network," said Bob Berger, AFPC's deputy director for personal data systems. "Once we complete our migration to DISA, Airmen will be able to access this information from any domain. This means an Airman could work HR actions on (his or her) own schedule through multiple mediums."

During the migration to DISA, Air Force technicians will concurrently upgrade the application that manages the website, personnel knowledge base and customer service functions. The upgraded application will have better statistics capabilities, incident routing and other knowledge management functions than the previous version AFPC currently employs. It also has a redesigned agent workspace that will help increase agent efficiency for the total force service centers in Denver and San Antonio.

The DISA migration also is providing additional cost savings for each total force personnel component because they will not be supporting development or replacement of in-house Web servers and other infrastructure requirements to manage this mission.

AFPC and the Air Reserve Personnel Center are the first Air Force personnel components to move their personnel knowledge bases to DISA. AFPC staff members manage personnel services information for active-duty officers, enlisted, civilians and retirees while ARPC staff members oversee Reserve personnel data and information. Guard and Reserve members' access to the Virtual Personnel Center - Guard and Reserve, or vPC-GR, website is not affected by this phase of the DISA migration.