The Army is creating a digital way for soldiers to sign into their new duty stations with a QR code. 

Army Human Resources Command officials said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington D.C. this week that they are implementing new digital tools to speed up and eventually replace the paperwork headache that soldiers go through to check into new bases.

HRC is trying to “maximize what we call self-service,” Col. Matthew Paul, project manager for the Army’s Integrated Personal and Pay System said about how the command is giving soldiers access to a mobile phone app to do the paperwork that comes with arriving at a new station. 

The new mobile app would have soldiers check into their new installation by scanning a QR code which triggers instructions to get through unit in-processing.. Soldiers would then get an activity guide that covers the offices they have to engage with. But rather than visit each in search of a signature, those visits would all be online, said Col. Rebekah Lust, director for HRC’s Functional Management Division. 

“In the past, soldiers would have to take time out of their busy training schedule, go to three or four or five different places, wait in line, take a number just to accomplish specific things. Now it’s all done through self service using IPSA,” Paul said. “They can see how things are moving along throughout that process. They can see their data. They can make changes. That’s unprecedented.” 

The goal is to roll the QR code out in the next six to eight months as a pilot then use feedback to work out bugs, he said.

“We work in 90 day blocks. That’s our agile methodology. We deploy every two weeks. Our planning block is 90 days.,” Paul said. “As opposed to getting a whole bunch of new capability overnight, we do it in bite sized chunks.”

Talent management

HRC is also using AI to explore a soldier’s talent profile, a two-page document that gives a synopsis of their  Army career with soldier-selected skills and is available in IPPS-A. Maj. Gen. Hope Rampy, commanding general of HRC said leaders can look up a soldier’s talent profile and see that they’re an infantry officer who speaks Spanish but also enjoys painting, for example. 

The Army is “looking at ways to use different AI capabilities to scrape for those data elements to go: I need someone who can speak Russian, has this background and enjoys hiking,” Rampy said.

Army human resources personnel want to use AI to scrape the data that’s available on a soldier’s profile to help make decisions about which jobs make sense based on their skillset faster. That process can currently take up to two weeks, Rampy said. 

“In the future, you can imagine using technology to scrape all the data we already have available in IPPS-A to identify talent for a mission, a job, or anything,” Rampy said.

Digital DD214

The Army is also giving soldiers a way to access a mobile app version of their DD214, the military form that veterans use to show their service history.

“In the past, they would have to go to the transition point and they would give [soldiers] a draft copy of it,” Lust said. “Now, once they have approved retirement or separation, and the [Military Personnel Division] generates the 214, they can look at the draft. It gives that visibility, the transparency.”

Using AI prompts may eventually be all a soldier needs to get HR-related paperwork done. 

“If I’m a soldier and I’m on a prompt right, how do I use a single prompt to get the information that I need?,” Paul said. “Next level would be, how to actually initiate HR transactions from a prompt like: ‘I’m Colonel Matthew Paul, and I need a lead form.’ And then it might ask me some questions, and then I might respond, and then at the end of that conversation, I may have an approved lead form — all through AI prompting.”

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