AF officials reschedule MilPDS upgrade

by Tech. Sgt. Steve Grever
Air Force Personnel Center Public Affairs

1/11/2013 - JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas  -- Originally slated for December of last year, Air Force officials will perform a major upgrade to the Military Personnel Data System, or MilPDS, in March.

The Air Force Personnel Operations Agency here will upgrade and transfer MilPDS to the Defense Information Systems Agency Defense Enterprise Computing Center. The project is expected to take 23 days. During the upgrade, MilPDS will not be available.

The delay allowed officials to complete testing and validation to ensure the new system performs properly. Upgrades to MilPDS have not been accomplished previously because the system was scheduled to be replaced in 2008 by a new Department of Defense military personnel system. When the DOD program was cancelled, Air Force officials made the decision to bring MilPDS up-to-date in order to reduce risks.

"We are confident that we will be able to upgrade MilPDS in March so we can address security, reliability and sustainability risks with the current system," said Robert Corsi, the Air Force Assistant Deputy Chief Of Staff for Manpower, Personnel and Services. "We will have processes in place to ensure personnel and pay service providers are able to work critical transactions for their customers during the upgrade."

Total Force Service Center representatives in San Antonio and Denver worked with Air Force component headquarters agencies and base-level personnel and pay service providers to develop procedures to accomplish critical functions for all Airmen during the MilPDS upgrade. Critical personnel and pay processes related to accessions, reenlistments, Guard and Reserve unit training assemblies, mobilization/activation, casualty and immediate separations will continue to function during the scheduled system downtime. Other personnel and pay processes will be held during the cutover period and processed once the upgrade is complete.

Air Force officials will release additional information and guidance to the Air Force's manpower, personnel, services and pay communities and total force Airmen to explain how the service will perform personnel and pay tasks during the upgrade and scheduled system outage.