EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska -- The 354th Comptroller Squadron is taking its first steps into a major overhaul of its day-to-day business practices.
The changes within the squadron are in preparation for the Air Force-wide personnel drawdown taking place over the next two years and a service-wide consolidation of financial services.
Manning decreases begin this fall and continue into 2008. The Secretary of the Air Force for financial management and his team have developed the career field's future scope of operations to ensure continued support to Airmen and DoD civilians with limited local finance personnel.
The plan involves several phased steps that allow the transformation to ultimately comply with Air Force Smart Operations of the 21st Century.
The first phase in the transformation is using the Air Force Financial Services Center - a central processing facility based at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.
The AFFSC will be used to consolidate the processing of all military pay and travel documents. This phase of the transformation should be virtually transparent to Eielson's finance customers and only affects the back-end process that occurs after a financial document is turned into the local finance office.
The Eielson Financial Services Flight recently went through a re-organization in preparation for implementation of this phase and is now performing intensive training to further ready ourselves.
The second phase in the transformation process is the opening of a full service call center co-located with the AFFSC. The call center will handle all military pay and travel inquiries via a toll-free number, accessible 24/7. The call center is being modeled on best practices from private industry and is recognized as being on the leading edge of military financial management.
The center will be fully operational in October 2008. Customers will have instant access to expert financial advice, anytime, from anywhere in the world, allowing them to resolve inquiries on their schedule with little or no mission interruption.
Manning changes are already happening within the squadron, even though the workload has not yet been transferred to the AFFSC. Over the next year, the local Eielson Financial Service Office will experience a downsizing of more than 50 percent.
The footprint in the office will become much smaller, ultimately reducing from 18 people to five when all is said and done. The financial service the Air Force currently provides isn't being eliminated; however, it is being updated with advances in technology and the Internet.
For now, the local finance office will still handle all military and travel pay processes, but will request their customers use the alternative self-service finance tools if possible. These tools are Web sites, such as myPay and the Defense Travel System.
These sites allow members to handle many of their military pay and travel needs at their convenience, from work, home, or in travel status. MyPay allows members to handle common pay items such as viewing mid- and end-of-month pay amounts, allotments, Thrift Savings Plan, leave balances and more.
In addition to myPay, members can process their own travel orders and vouchers via DTS, including booking airline tickets, hotels reservations, and rental car reservations. Currently DTS only manages routine temporary duty-type trips, but will soon have the capability to process all deployment and formal training orders.
Both of these systems empower customers to take care of their finance needs when it's convenient for them, eliminating the need to leave work and go to finance. While many people like face-to-face interaction, manning cuts eventually will not allow for this except for the most complex and difficult issues.
Customers will be required to use the call center, myPay, DTS, TSP and the per diem site to manage routine issues. As the financial services office continues transforming, we will strive to make this a smooth transition for Eielson AFB customers; but the community can ready themselves by utilizing the available self-service Web sites now.
Useful pay Web sites
myPay -- https://mypay.dfas.mil/mypay.aspx
DTS -- http://www.defensetravel.osd.mil/dts/site/index.jsp
Travel and Per Diem Information -- https://secureapp2.hqda.pentagon.mil/perdiem/trvlregs.html