The Influence of Digital Media on the United States Army Digital media has integrated itself into nearly every facet of the modern United States Army. For many years, the Army has increased its dependency on the use of digital media in day to day operations, training, communications, public relations, and administrative tasks. Some people claim that we are too dependent on these technologies for our own good. However, it has helped keep us the most powerful fighting force on the face of the planet. This case study will look at five functional areas that digital media has improved the Army: Administration, Training, Communication, Public Relations, and Warfighting Capabilities. In each of these functional areas, we will explore how …show more content…
This meant the signed copy then had to be scanned back into the computer and then emailed or uploaded into a database. Of course, the original paper copy still existed, so the Army had not met the goal of being paperless yet. Finally, around 2012 the Army acquired the technology that included the digital signature that would allow them to truly go paperless. The technology had existed for five years, but the Army’s slow procurement and distribution process was one of the many lessons learned: in the digital age, the Army had to move faster and be more flexible to change. This paperless platform would allow the Army to overhaul all administrative systems. The Publication Directorate stopped printing paper copies of manuals and regulations, and posted the digital copies to an online library, where changes could easily be updated. Evaluations could be completed online, signed online, and submitted online. Leave forms and award recommendations could go from one user to approver with the click of a button across the world if needed. And promotion boards no longer needed to flip through endless reams of paper to select candidates-just click through digital copies of a file for a potential promotion candidate. The Army is positioning itself for the future by reducing the number of people it needs to do the administrative work of the past and train the future administrators in computer applications for the future. A company 20 years ago traditionally had two
The Army’s Organizational Life Cycle Model contains eight phases (U.S. Army War College, 2015-2016). This paper identifies and explains four of those phases, acquisition, training, distribution, and deployment.
The past decade has witnessed fundamental changes in the information environment, which makes availability and access to information more prevalent than in the past. For this reason, we must develop and maintain the ability to influence the content and flow of information to potential adversaries, as well as foreign civilian audiences in the area of operations.
On Nov 2013, the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) awarded the contract to “modernize” its existing custom developed application Cadet Administrative Management Information System (CAMIS) II to the Solers Corporation (Solers Corporation, 2016). CAMIS was developed over several years and began to encompass support for many disparate business processes at the Academy, but primarily served as a Student Information/Management System. This modernization effort or CAMIS III was the third iteration of moving CAMIS from a legacy system to a new platform. Almost 2 years later: Mar 2016, this project ended with the government decision to discontinue the modernization effort. This was done by primarily not exercising option years and stopping funding on the modernization development line item of the contract. (Paulson, 2015) Despite modernization effort ending, the government continued to support the CAMIS III operations and support portion of the contract, as well as the legacy CAMIS II contract. This paper attempts to analyze why this software project failed, based on the personal experiences and perspectives from the overall combined team and attempts to understand why. The major reasons for failure included: gross underestimates (scope, cost, and schedule). However, there were opportunities to achieve a better outcome. These opportunities were failures by the program manager, vendor team, and management stakeholder expectations.
Current capability set fielding along with future fielding 's including Bradley engineering change proposal (ECP), Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) Engineering, Manufacturing, and Development (EMD), and full rate production (FRP) radio variants are the Army 's answer to brigade combat team modernization. The tactical environment is the tip of the spear, a challenging space where effectiveness, survivability, and sustainability provide the keys to success. That success is becoming increasingly reliant on data. Data drives our missions, from operations, intelligence, and fires, to other areas such as medical and logistics. Consumption of data is being fueled by the introduction of new communication systems. Warfighter information tactical (WIN-T) has begun to bring this data down to the Brigade and Battalion level with the Point of Presence (POP), and the Battalion and Company level with the Soldier Network Extension (SNE). New radio waveforms are providing conduits for data down to the tactical edge. WIN-T and Handheld, Manpack, and Small Form Fit (HMS) radios are being integrated into Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) vehicle platforms now. The Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio (MNVR) is just around the corner in FY17.
The United States Army is always constantly changing as we are a living breathing organization. From the time that Soldiers were drafted into the Army and went straight to war, to the Soldiers just signing up and doing their time and getting out. In today’s Army there are more and more of our service members staying in twenty years or even longer turning the Army profession into their careers and livelihood. As the Army continues to change we have begun to shift to be a better professional Army. “Professionals require years of study and practice before they are capable of expert work” (DA HQ, 2010, p. 2). Professionals use life-long pursuit to build their knowledge to become an expert in their field. In turn, they then lead, train and develop other Soldiers to become skilled professionals in their
With each passing year, current technologies continue to evolve or change while new technology or innovations emerge that, in some instances, profoundly change markets, societies, or ways of living. For all organizations, to include the military, the persistent change of technology means that organizations must also evolve and change accordingly. Based on research by Accenture’s Paul Nunes and Tim Breene in 2011, only 7 percent of companies that cease to grow ever survive over the long term, which serves as a strong warning for any organization about the need to change. In addition to technological change, the military faces many other challenges as well. The most significant challenges include budgetary constraints, mandated drawdowns in personnel strength, and numerous mission demands across the globe.
I have a comprehensive understanding of the Department of Defense’s vision and direction and long-range plans and emerging technologies that can lead to proper programming and resource allocation. The Strategy of the DoD, DoN, and the USMC relies on the use of innovation and emerging technologies to maintain both a strategic and tactical advantage in the warfighting domain, and as a means of achieving efficiencies in the business domains. The DoD in general and the DoN specifically have in their vision statements and leadership direction that the services will use innovation both as a force multiplier and a means to achieve efficiencies and costs savings. While the various Services and Agencies within the DoD differ in some aspects, there are numerous similarities. They all have the vision and objectives to delivery information to the user to meet the Command and Control and IT needs, even in a contested environment. Generally, the goals within the Department are to consolidate and stabilize the infrastructure, unify communications, manage innovation, build and maintain a strategic workforce, consolidate datacenters leading to improve application portfolio access and management and lastly enhance network operations. I will point out here that I have been materially involved in all aspects of these
In FY13 the Army will transition as we reduce the size of the assigned personnel and force structure. The initial stage of drawdown for Active Component Operational Support is expected to end by FY15 and begins to eliminate the wartime allowance completed by FY17 affecting the ability formations. The Army has enough Soldiers to fill authorization aggregate, but still has shortages in Rank and Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). We need to assign personnel that are available to determine manning effectiveness as well as readiness in deploying units. Synchronizes and integrates readiness priorities for the war fighter and our Army including all forces. The Army Forces Generation (ARFORGEN) cycle and the Army priorities are already established
The primary issue facing the United States Army in 2025 and beyond is its ability to operate in a fiscally constrained environment. According to the Army Capabilities Integration Center’s (ARCIC) primary initiative, Force 2025 and beyond, it “Is the Army 's strategy to ensure the future joint force can win in a complex world.” Furthermore, ARCIC’s initiatives will “consists of activities along three primary lines of effort: force employment; science and technology and human performance optimization; and force design.” Proponents of a lighter and more rapidly deployable force continue to argue for a dramatic downsizing of mechanized and armored forces.
In a speech at George Washington University in November of 2015, the United States Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter also addressed challenges facing the United States, stating that the security of the US depends on a force better than it is today. This force not only includes the military services, but also extends to the civilian workforce of the combat support agencies, upon which this paper focuses. The vision of the future force is one that can quickly adapt and achieve success in a sophisticated, highly-technical and rapidly changing environment; maximize the benefits of commercial technology development; and address global military competition to defend the nation and make the world a better place.
While in Florida I researched tablets that were able to convert handwriting to text and found one that contained the features I thought would be necessary to eliminate the hardcopy documentation and complete the gap assessment electronically. The transition to the electronic documentation cut the time of completion significantly from 20 to 24 hours to around 10 to 16. By converting the hardcopy form to electronic, Operational Security saved 350 administrative hours throughout the remaining footprint of Duke Energy. Those 350 hours equates to about 8.5 weeks and $13,476 dollars saved in administrative work. A savings of 36%, when compared to our original projections. Since the conclusion of the project, every region received a tablet and I have trained everyone on the inspection and documentation process. The method has been adopted throughout our footprint and adapted to be used on a very similar project where all NERC CIP sites have to be inspected bi-annually, that is currently underway which I am
The Army is a profession because it requires a collaboration of highly training Soldiers who possess specialized skills that combine to operate in complex situations in more complex environments. General Martin Dempsey stated that “The Profession of Arms requires expert knowledge, and that expertise is manifested as unique skills in the individual professional and by Army units.” For the purpose of this paper the operational definition of the term profession is: a type of job that requires special education training, or skill. In order to meet and maintain the demands of this definition, The Army has established the Army Development Model which consists of institutions, operational training, and self-development to create highly skilled service members.
In 1995, paper reduction was mention by Congress when they generated a policy which was implement by the United States Senate that sot to reduce the large quantities of paper being used to eliminate needless spending by the federal government (U.S., 1995). Thus, it was made aware that paper costs where an issue that needed to be mitigated. Likewise, with an increase in technology, going paperless is more feasible and can save vast quantities of money for any company that does it (“Paper or Electronic”, 2003). However, if one was to travel to a military administrative office they would see several documents that still exist on paper. Lower level manager of the administrative functions must act to reduce their use of paper in compliance with the will of Congress to save money for the Armed Forces. Although, manager maybe aware converting to electronic files would be useful, it would be time consuming at first and distract from the current priorities that key personnel may be focusing on. Thus, it is true what it said about managers in that they are aware of best practices that must be implemented but they
In the electronic driven world we live in, having a fillable form in a digital format is a plus for most online users. Being able to submit paperless forms bypassing the tasks of printing forms, completing the fields and making copies is a bonus. If the customer has to put it in the mail, you may never receive it.
In Chapter 2 of The Myth of the Paperless Office, Sellen and Harper discuss two case studies of paperless office - Dan Tech and UK Com.