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                         May 10, 2002

West Point CPAC tests new personal service concept

By Irene Brown
Editor

The West Point Civilian Personnel Advisory Center is testing a new concept to make personnel actions go quicker and smoother.

"We are the Army’s test site for a new program that shifts the advisory services from being performed at the CPAC to being performed at the individual activities," said West Point Civilian Personnel Director Michael Heller.

The idea is that when activities have a personnel action to complete like an award or a recruit, Heller said, the servicing advisor will come on site to assist the manager, supervisor or the activities’ administrative person tasked with completing the action. That assistance includes guidance in a number of areas including recruitment strategies, entitlements, rules regarding use of leave without pay, temporary promotions, reassignments and award options.

"The MDCPDS is a complex and somewhat unforgiving system and it is frequently necessary to make changes," Heller explained. "This will help eliminate errors on the initial entry into the Modern Defense Civilian Personnel System as well as educate our customers."

Until now, the process called for the creator of the Request for Personnel Action and Gatekeeper checklist to forward them through the resource manager and then to manpower and budget. The budget staff then forwarded the action to CPAC where it was reviewed for errors and forwarded to Aberdeen for processing.

"That review for errors often meant having to contact the person who created the RPA and offer guidance or advice," Heller said. "Even after it was forwarded to the CPOC for action, it sometimes came back again."

By moving the quality control role to the beginning of the process, CPAC hopes to avoid the back and forth that often occurs with particularly complex or confusing actions, Heller explained. But, he added, we also hope to accomplish other things while we are on site at the activities.

"Because the advisors will be spending more time in their respective activities, they will be able to assist employees with other personnel questions and concerns," Heller explained. "For example, employees with questions about accessing ABC would be able to sit with the advisor at their office and not have to travel to the CPAC."

Lt. Col. Ed Clarke, the USMA Secretary of the General Staff, said he liked the new procedures very much.

"It was very helpful having the advisor come to the field and show me how to prepare and submit RPAs for my employees," Clarke said. "I’m sure that most would agree that the new procedures give managers more of a sense that the personnel system is responding more rapidly to the needs of their organizations."

Linda Paffenroth, a senior administrative assistant and the person responsible for completing personnel actions in the Public Affairs Office here, said she found it very helpful to have PAO’s CPAC specialist, Marty Nolan, sitting with her.

"The MODERN system is very ‘user-unfriendly’ and it definitely gave me reassurance to have Marty right here advising me," Paffenroth said.

She pointed out that for someone who doesn’t use the system all the time, this new program is invaluable.

"If you don’t do personnel actions all the time, you can lose touch with the system," Paffenroth explained. "This new program gives me more confidence and assurance."

Carol McQuinn, CPAC Chief of Staffing, said that’s exactly the type of input the CPAC needs.

"Since we are conducting this test for the Army, we will be reviewing comments from our customers as well as monitoring several indicators including the time it takes to fill vacancies, the number of RPAs that have no errors, things like that," she explained.

CPAC also needs to know when an activity plans to initiate a personnel action so they can schedule time for the advisors, McQuinn said.

"The activities must tell their advisors when they are going to perform a personnel action," she explained. "The advisors check their voice and e-mail accounts frequently, but if anyone is unable to reach them they should call CPAC."

To send comments on the new program, e-mail individual advisors with a copy furnished to Heller, or e-mail Heller directly at michael.heller@usma.edu. Anyone unable to contact an advisor should call 938-3943.