Can the U.S. Army Reserve Pay Soldiers Correctly?

Q1. Write a system analysis report about the U.S. Army pay system. What have been the problems with existing systems? What management, organization, and technology factors caused the problems? What was the impact of these problems? What are the objectives and information requirements of a new systems solution?

Answer:
1. Problems in existing system: The existing pay system has dire problems of asymmetrical payments. The inability to keep up-to-date information is caused by an out-of-date system. This old system requires the manual input of updates, resulting in increasing chances of error occurrence.

2. Management, operation and technological problems: The problems in their management and operation are lacking a system that, automatically updates changes. It also lacks integration between the Personnel System and the Regional Level Application system to process the salaries, bonuses and benefits.

Moreover, the technologies are been in use since the Vietnam War. The old aged systems needed manual updates, increasing potential for error. The languages used to write the systems are dated back to 40 years making it unable to work at an acceptable level.

3. Impacts of the problems:
-Increasing possibility of system damage without proper documentation
-High degree of error due to constant need for manual updates
-Soldiers have to file correct tax returns due to lacking revise tax rates.
-Report of overpayment to 1,300 soldiers worth 1.5 millions.
-Demand for return of overpayment to families of the deceased, for error in active status

4. Objectives and information requirement of a new systems solution: The main objective is to have a flexible new system that will enable the personnel and regional system to integrate smoothly. The system also needed to automatically update the current deployment and redeployment status of the soldiers.



Q3. Describe the role of end users and technical specialist in analyzing the problem and developing a solution.

Answer: The end user shouldn’t have to re-enter data once this system is in place. And the amount of duplicate work will be eliminated. The Unit Commander was responsible for processing the hard copy of any mobilization. If this was not done; payroll would not know the pay scale. The proper check amounts will be sent without further errors. The ‘new system’ is still on the drawing board, since 2006. The system will have the capability to encompass the payment processing with mass updates for various degrees of duty pay.

The solution will be to build a system that automatically updates the occurring changes in a soldier’s status, to reduce manual error. There is need for a centralized database system that collects all the information and when needed, updates and sends to the particular payroll or personnel system. Also, the system should have a prolonged capability to hold the information rather deleting at the end of each 30 day cycle. This will efficiently and effectively improve their pay system by limiting their inaccuracy.