By ELLEN MESSMER
Network World, 10/16/00
Call it the battle of the information bulge. The U.S. Air Force personnel center in Denver is charged with fielding inquiries for record transcripts and benefits entitlements from more than 924,000 people with military ties as reservists, veterans or guardsmen.
Until recently, that meant about 44,000 phone calls per month coming into the 800-number call center, where three dozen employees first had to determine the nature of the inquiries. Did the individuals want to make an address change, find out about benefits or get a copy of their military-service records? Once answered, the Air Reserve Personnel Center would hand calls over to yet another division or agency, such as the Veterans Administration.About a year ago, Air Force technology managers decided there was a better way.The Air Force turned to the Web as its main weapon for responding to requests and updating information. Using the Web address www.arpc.org, the center posted a searchable list of frequently asked questions and answers. There's also a hotline button that lets perplexed visitors to the site fill out an information request form that gets automatically routed via e-mail to the appropriate customer representative. "We want the reservists to be able to help themselves," says Maj. Frederick Bromley, deputy director of the communications and information directorate at the Air Reserve Personnel Center. "Fifty percent of the questions coming in to us are records requests, such as where can I get extra copies of the DD214 document [, which is] used all the time for benefits." The searchable www.arpc.org Web site, built using RightNow Technologies' Web customer-relationship management software, can answer those questions without a phone call. Military Web sites are usually found under the ".mil" domain designation, but the Air Force personnel center decided to use ".org" because so much of its contact would be with civilians rather than enlisted personnel. According to Bromley, the www. arpc.org site has gained an avid following among reservists, and its use has contributed to an almost 50% drop in the number of calls coming into the call center.This is just the start of an ambitious Air Force initiative to use the Web to communicate with both active and nonactive military personnel.Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, has for decades maintained a data warehouse of personnel records stored on older Honeywell-Bell systems. This data is being migrated to an Oracle database. The plan is to install an application server and Web front end by March so portions of these records can be made available over the Web. Reservists, guardsmen and veterans could check records or update routine personal information without making a phone call.The Air Force Reserve Personnel Center will also need to synchronize its Web activities with Randolph Air Force Base. Exactly how that will be done is under discussion now. Bromley anticipates the call centers, which now handle e-mail, will expand into Web chat as well. "We have to do chat," he says. "If you need to collaborate, you have to do chat."The Air Force's intention to open internal records databases has gotten Bromley thinking about the possibility of more change."Military LANs are very robust, and internally we could go with IP for 'soft phones' and voice over IP," he says. "It might be an affordable way to replace PBXs."Though only in the early stages of exploring the new voice-over-IP technology - he's checking out the Cosmo.com product - Bromley thinks Web-enabled phone conversations just might fly for the Air Force.All contents copyright 1995-2000 Network World, Inc. http://www.nwfusion.com