Why is the military information management system so terrible?

1LT Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 23 May 2016 13:47:03 -0400

What I mean by this is very straight forward. None of the systems across the entire DoD are all that helpful, painless to use or even modern. I hate to sound ungrateful but tell me the last time you walked in and said "Gee, I can't wait to work on our outdated computer systems today!"

Civilian companies are a decade or more ahead in this regard and for no reason at all.

Response by PO1 William "Chip" Nagel made May 23 at 2016 1:49 PM

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel — Mon, 23 May 2016 13:49:59 -0400

That doesn't sound good. Hard to believe that at one time (My Time) the Military in Cooperation with the colleges developed the World Wide Web, the Internet MILNET/ARPANET Project that I worked on. Sad to hear that.

Response by 1LT Private RallyPoint Member made May 23 at 2016 1:55 PM

1LT Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 23 May 2016 13:55:34 -0400

Let's start with AKO. The profile (PT score, medical, GAT, etc) information is a step in the right direction and that is the most useful piece of AKO. Everything else is basically garbage. The training networks are a mess and you can't find the courses you'd like without have their full course title name, the course number, the start-date, the instructor's mother's maiden name, etc.

DTS is also a complete smoking pile of refuse. It is the most clunky, out of date, slow, ugly website any of us have seen that requires so many moving pieces to function (reviewers, reviewers for reviewers, approvers, etc) I'm not entirely sure why it even still exists. The Army could use a whole MOS (Travel Specialists) dedicated to using the system so the rest of us can get things approved and moving on time.

I've mapped a whole system that would do the job of every single individual system we've got for training, info management, etc but it'll never fly. It would need a company like Google to create and implement.

And for anyone about to tell me that the systems need to be separate because of security I'd have to wonder if you ever realized each one has the exact same PII for every person.

-End Rant

Response by LTC Paul Labrador made May 23 at 2016 2:02 PM

LTC Paul Labrador — Mon, 23 May 2016 14:02:42 -0400

Because we have security requirements that are far and away above what most civilian workplaces have. That and the way the acquisition and contracting process works almost ensures we will be using tech that is a generation behind the market.

Response by SP5 David Cox made May 23 at 2016 4:47 PM

SP5 David Cox — Mon, 23 May 2016 16:47:53 -0400

Do any of the services still have any programmers? I've been told the Navy stopped having programmers years ago - retention issues (watch carefully, this chorus will come up again). My service, the Army, doesn't appear to have programmers any longer - my MOS (74F) is now some sort of NBC slot, and I know that they were have trouble retaining us when I was in (ETS'd in 82). At the time, the AF had the most comprehensive training program - 6 months at Keesler AFB, but I don't know what they do these days. Even back in my time, the Army couldn't keep up with changing technology. AIT consisted of COBOL training, but the first question I got asked when I reported to my first assignments was if I knew FORTRAN? I don't expect that things got any easier since then, so I don't blame them for contracting everything out, but that brings up another issue - everything thing has been done by the lowest bidder, and in many cases I suspect that different pieces were done by different agencies/commands that probably never coordinated requirements with each other. Under-funding and false economies are another issue. I worked on one Army system that was built on a Navy computer (A/N-UYK-7, then upgraded to A/N-UYK-43) that used a proprietary language (CMS-2Y - ever heard of it?). Why was the Army using a Navy computer? I was told it was because they were available and the Army got them for free from the Navy somehow. End result was that there was a very limited pool of people who knew that Navy language and had the clearance needed by the Army. While this was a critical system, it was only deployed to 2 sites (Berlin and Augsburg, Germany), with a 3rd planned system never happening. There was never enough critical mass to get more people trained for it. And so on...

Response by CPT Joseph K Murdock made May 23 at 2016 5:31 PM

CPT Joseph K Murdock — Mon, 23 May 2016 17:31:57 -0400

I think the main Finance System was built in the 60s or 70s. Each branch has their version of it due to different pays. We attempted to combine all the systems, but it was for not because or roadblocks, bad data, and the inability to make the programmers understand the nuances of military pay. How do you program a new Pay System if you don't understand military pay?