The Greek letter delta (Δ) refers to the differences between two data points or parameters. Warfighters throughout human history have wrestled with the pervasive presence of deltas between data reporting and data reality. Deltas in data have perennially hindered the ability of commanders and staffs to maintain accurate understanding to make well-informed decisions. They can pop up anytime in the collection, processing, storage, or transmission of data, and can ultimately ruin a commander’s operations by degrading the unit’s common operational picture and decision-making process.
The Army’s personnel are its most vital asset in warfighting, underscoring the importance of its human resources (HR) and sustainment processes that track and support warfighters. Accurate data are the lifeblood of those processes. Deltas in data that arise from disconnected data storage, latency in data transmission, and other similar friction threaten those processes.
Data accuracy and consistency are operational necessities in contemporary warfare. These necessities became the mothers of several inventions that aimed to streamline data storage and transmission and create seamless system interoperability.
In 2023, the Army released the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army (IPPS-A) to all of its components: the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard. It gave HR professionals a system of unified HR-related processes. The new consolidated system allowed numerous legacy systems to be phased out. Data, once scattered across disconnected systems, became seamlessly connected, interdependent, and visible to HR professionals and command teams at every level on a single platform. HR professionals could support their command’s information advantage efforts by providing high-quality data that accurately reflected their operational situation.
It is a frightening thought for a sustainment warfighter to realize that their data may be erroneous and misleading. It is not overly dramatic to suggest that winning and losing, and even life and death, hinges on the consistency and accuracy of data. Consider requests for information such as: Do we have replacements? What is Bravo Company’s strength? How are they doing on ammunition? Where are our medical treatment areas? How many patients are there? Now, imagine these situation reports and the decisions they lead to being corrupted by misinformation created by deltas in data from data management systems.
The sustainment community must do everything it can to ensure that data are interoperable and exchanged between systems rapidly and efficiently. The Army’s sustainment software enterprise is taking this user-centric approach to give sustainment warfighters the data they need in near-real- time. These software changes are not palleted ideas sitting idly at the division supply area. Modernization efforts are underway.
The Army is implementing the Unified Data Reference Architecture (UDRA) strategy for both existing and upcoming software. UDRA focuses on applying data-driven design principles rather than system-driven ones. Many software applications in the Army were developed in silos, prioritizing system performance over communication with other systems.
Commanders and decision makers deserve easily discoverable, system-agnostic data products with visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trusted, interoperable, and secure data. Compliance with UDRA is a priority for upcoming software programs.
In the logistics community, the reliable-but-complex user interface of the Global Combat Support System-Army will be replaced by the Enterprise Business System-Convergence (EBS-C). EBS-C will also replace the Army Enterprise Systems Integration Program.
For HR professionals, IPPS-A is charged with replacing 21 legacy software systems within the HR business mission area over the next several years. However, the Army mandates that business process reengineering (BPR) be performed before developing a software replacement. The BPR process goals include removing redundant data elements, consolidating disparate data sets into lucid ones, and optimizing processes that require swivel-chair data entry and exchange.
An example of ongoing BPR and partner coordination is the Army’s G-3/5/7 partnering to build the Global Force Information Management Operational Environment (GFIM-OE). GFIMOE will implement the Global Force Management Data Initiative, in which all units, positions, pieces of equipment, and relationships have a unique global force management identifier (GFMID).
The first phase of GFIM-OE development is Define the Future Force, which is scheduled to replace vital management systems such as the Force Management System and the Army Organization Server (AOS). Today, sustainment warfighters use these systems to check their modified table of organization and equipment and table of distribution and allowance documents. Sustainment warfighters who help with unit status reports are intimately familiar with these documents and systems.
Just as a manual tracker differs from a Joint Battle Command-Platform chat at the tactical level, the strategic level also encounters challenges with inconsistent data sources that are meant to provide the same information. Currently, IPPS-A obtains its force structure data from AOS, while other systems in the HR business mission area use the personnel management and authorization document (PMAD) produced by the Personnel Authorizations Module (PAM).
Notably, U.S. Army Human Resources Command uses the PMAD to distribute personnel across the force, which introduces the risk of deltas between AOS and PMAD data. Discrepancies must be alleviated through extensive manual work completed by HR professionals. To create a common operational picture across all Army components, Army staff is working to ensure that all of the Army’s systems consume and display the same force structure data.
Some of the solutions and capabilities include:
- Temporary billet (templet) management geared toward reducing the quantity and type of templates across all three components.
- GFMID retention rules to reduce the probability that service members become orphans in IPPS-A — a phenomenon where a service member’s position number and record become inactive due to the loss of the inbound position identifier (the GFMID).
- Leveraging GFIM-OE-produced data elements to drive HR data elements, such as a unit status code driving a military component category. Another example of this is the location of positions adopting the location of the unit to which they are attached.
- Optimizing data exchange format, frequency, and method to ensure that data from the two systems are shared rapidly and efficiently. Some systems depend on IPPS-A, a G-1-operated system, to relay force structure data, which are authoritatively sourced from a G-3/5/7 system. Ensuring that IPPS-A receives and accurately represents the data generated by GFIM-OE reduces complexity and provides a unified view.
- The future operations and functionality of the PAM are scheduled to sunset, but the system provides G-1 with critical functionality to develop a seven-year manning program by skill and grade.
Since standing up in December 2024, working groups focused on these solutions have achieved significant progress and synergy toward fixing strategic-level inefficiencies that have trickle-down impacts on tactical-level sustainment warfighters. The problem of deltas in data will not be solved overnight. However, strategic-level employees and contractors are vigilantly working to ensure command teams, decision makers, and sustainment warfighters have high-quality and highly accessible data to enable data-driven decision making from the office to the tactical edge.
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CPT James Palmer serves as a data and business analyst for the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army in Arlington, Virginia. He previously served as a battalion logistics officer in 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. He commissioned as an infantry officer from the U.S. Military Academy. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in operations research.
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This article was published in the spring 2025 issue of
Army Sustainment.
SOURCE: Army.mil,
https://www.army.mil/article/284094/