Military

How A Human Resources System Could Revolutionize the Army

One of the hardest parts of starting a new government program is finding the right talent to see it through. The Army knows this all too well. But a couple of program managers think they have at least part of the solution.

Col. Gregory Johnson, chief of the Army’s Functional Management Division, faced this challenge two years ago when he joined the leadership team for the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army, or IPPS-A, a program to integrate the Army’s 200 pay systems and revolutionize the way it manages its human resources.

Johnson needed a team of strong coders, designers and customer experience professionals but had no ready means of identifying those people within the Army’s ranks. So, he reached out to colleagues whom he had a rapport with, asking for names. He sifted through all those responses looking for certain skills and attributes and eventually pulled together a core team capable of meeting the mission: make sure no one ever had to go through that broken process again.