Air Force to announce portal
Initiative will integrate more than 28,000 information systems and help service members cut through red tape to get the information they need to do their jobs
In October, the Air Force plans to announce an enterprise portal initiative
that will integrate more than 28,000 information systems and help service
members cut through red tape that often prevents them from getting the information
they need to do their jobs, the service's top communicator said last week.
The portal, informally dubbed My.AirForce (my dot Air Force), is intended
to shrink the service's hundreds of Web-based systems into one point of
easy access for all the service's online information. It also will provide
a host of online services, such as automated, paperless in processing of
personnel, medical, pay and other family information for service members
who move to a new base. In addition, the portal might also serve Air Force
commanders requiring critical battlefield information.
Lt. Gen. John Woodward, the Joint Staff J-6 and Air Force director of communications,
announced the initiative during a keynote speech last week at the Air Force
Information Technology Conference in Montgomery, Ala. Portions of the portal,
such as the Virtual Military Personnel Facility and specific pilot records,
will be up and running by October. Of the 28 modules being worked on now,
up to 16 could be available as early as October, Woodward said.
The My.AirForce approach calls for a single Web portal to deliver whatever
information Air Force personnel need to get their jobs done, said Air Force
Col. Neal Fox, director of the Commercial Information Technology Product
Area Directorate at the Standard Systems Group. "That includes providing
information for logistics, to know the status of an order of supplies required
for a base or a deployment, to provide essentially information on the status
of anything a person would need to know to get the job done in the Air Force,"
Fox said.
"Essentially, it becomes an extension of our command and control system,
providing timely information to make critical decisions," he added.
Air Force officials declined to provide specific details on the program,
but said critical decisions will be made in October at the service's so-called
Corona meeting, an annual get-together of the service's top leaders at which
they debate some of the Air Force's most critical issues and often lay out
a plan of action.