Teammates,
We are happy to announce that the Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army (IPPS-A) has been live for Human Resources (HR) Professionals for more than one month, and accessible to all Soldiers for more than three weeks. As with any enterprise software launch, we anticipated that it may take time to adapt and learn the new system.
IPPS-A completed multiple stress tests, which provided critical lessons related to data and system functionality. However, not every single scenario can be anticipated and tested in a testing environment. Thank you for your patience during this time.
All of you, as everyday users, have been instrumental in making IPPS-A a better system for Soldiers and the U.S. Army. You have identified items that needed to be corrected and brought them to our attention. Unlike previous systems, IPPS-A is agile, allowing for rapid response and quick resolution of these discrepancies noted by the field.
We are still in the early stages of IPPS-A, and have more work to do. That’s why I wanted to thank you for your feedback and share updates on items I know are important to you.
Key Items
Enlisted Promotions. February 2023 Junior/Senior enlisted promotion lists, normally published on the 20th of each month, are expected to be published on 1 February 2023 by Human Resources Command (HRC). HRC completed reconciliation of the promotion lists early and published the lists on 25 January 2023. Congratulations to all Soldiers that made the list!
IPPS-A Promotion Points Worksheet (PPW). Soldiers can now log into IPPS-A on their mobile devices to validate their promotion points. The weapons qualification and correspondence course discrepancies previously noted have been resolved. Units have been advised to submit a Customer Service Management (CRM) ticket to resolve any remaining issues. The discrepancy for the APFT event will not be resolved prior to changing to the ACFT for promotions points. HRC released MILPER Message 23-022, which addresses the data discrepancies and provides guidance on how to ensure a Soldier’s promotion is backdated if the data discrepancies affected their selection for promotion.
System Highlights
Since Go-Live, we have seen functional trends related to IPPS-A capabilities:
Mobile Accessibility. As a Self-Service user, IPPS-A can be accessed by your government or personal device. To date, the IPPS-A App has been downloaded 270K times.
Automation. IPPS-A is a Soldier system, and is designed to improve the workflow of personnel requests. Many of your manual paper processes, such as leave, awards, or name changes, are now automated. This means HR Professionals don’t need to input the same personal information into multiple personnel and pay databases, reducing errors, increasing efficiency, while saving you time.
Transparency. IPPS-A is providing you transparency of personnel actions by allowing you to track the status of your Personnel Action Request (PAR) through approval. IPPS-A provides real-time visibility of where your request is at in the approval process.
Pay Efficiency. While some requests are still performed outside of IPPS-A, personnel actions performed within the system automatically trigger more timely and accurate pay, providing you and your families enhanced financial reliability. For example: Previously, S1s had to submit paper documents to local finance for an absence request. Finance would manually input the leave data into the Defense Joint Military Pay System (DJMS) to charge the Soldier leave. Now, Soldiers perform these requests in IPPS-A, which transmits them to DJMS automatically, so there is no need for manual printing/transporting documents to local finance to get them actioned.
Service/Assistance. IPPS-A’s CRM offers another means for you to ask questions and get help, instead of physically going to your S1 shop. We have Over the Shoulder Support (OTSS) personnel providing hands-on training in the field, as well as virtual OTSS through our IPPS-A Go-Live Support MS Teams channel. The IPPS-A Facebook group is a great place to connect with your peers and discuss processes and best practices.
Thank you for your support and continued engagement. Your hard work and dedication has been monumental in this effort.
V/r,
SGM Gary A. Krese
Senior Enlisted Advisor
DCS – G1, IPPS-A FMD