Military Paperwork Going Digital

Personnel records, especially military personnel records, can become a huge storage burden with the passage of time and the longevity of employees. The Army Reserve is in the process of converting personnel folders stuffed with paper to digital images on optical media.

Jackie Bing, director, Air Reserve Personnel Center Program Manager, spoke with reporters recently to describe those efforts in detail. The current process involves the records of individuals who have separated or retired or who belong to the Individual Ready Reserve.

The records storage issue for Bing and her colleagues is complex. They stopped shipping records to the National Personnel Records Center in 2004. The records that were not shipped, paper and microfiche, now must be converted to digital media because the Center is moving to new and smaller space in the near future. The deadline for all of the records to have been converted is March 31, 2011.

Ms. Bing points to the conversion of 120,000 files in the last two years. Some 130,000 files remain but technological improvements by the contractor performing the work have increased the speed of the process.

Andy Hamilton, a quality assurance evaluator with the Center, described the hardware and software used. The contractor is using Fuji high-speed scanners and Kofax VRS software. The file produced is a TIFF format, and is not presently word searchable. The quality standard is 100%, and a team of evaluators including Hamilton reviews each file produced. 116 people are working on this project for the contractor.

An average file contains 40-60 pages but not every document is being scanned. A predetermined list of key documents is used to determine what is scanned and the average digital file contains about 20 documents, according to Hamilton.

Bing told reporters that once the digital copy is approved, the paper file is shredded on site by a company that brings an industrial shredder to the Center.

The contract for the conversion of the microfiche is in process.

Hamilton said that the converted records are available to the service member through the Personnel Records Display Application (PRDA) and is accessible from any computer with a .mil or .gov address. This project is converting some of the last paper records in the military to digital media, a process that began with the introduction of the Automated Records Management System in 1994.