Beginning in the third quarter of FY19, the Army DACM Office will begin integration of an automated data exchange that will eliminate the necessity of the Acquisition Career Record Brief (ACRB) for the Reserve component.
Let’s back up.
Currently, all Functional Area (FA) 51 officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in the U.S. Army Reserve and Army National Guard are required to have an ACRB through the Career Acquisition Personnel and Position Management Information System (CAPPMIS). The ACRB is an automated, authenticated record of a Soldier’s education, training and acquisition assignment history.
CAPPMIS accounts for active-duty FA51 Soldiers are updated twice a month, pulling current information from their Officer Record Brief (ORB) or Enlisted Record Brief (ERB) from either the Total Officer Personnel Management and Information System for officers, or the Enlisted Distribution and Assignment System for NCOs. The Army Reserve uses a system called Reserve Career Management System (RCMS) to manage ORBs and ERBs, while the Army National Guard uses the RCMS-G. Incompatibility between these two systems and the active-duty systems has required Reserve and National Guard Soldiers to have an ACRB account and for ACRBs to be manually updated to reflect their current ORB or ERB information. The ACRB was never intended to replace the ORB or the ERB as the official career management document for Army soldiers.
So what’s happening?
The move to eliminate the ACRB for Reserve and National Guard Soldiers is a result of the Army—specifically the Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army—consolidating many of these stovepiped systems. The Army DACM Office is beginning to work toward developing and executing a plan for the automation of the Army Reserve CAPPMIS information exchange. These changes will be included in a certification policy update that will be published in the near future.
What does this mean for Reservists? We recognize this will be a big change for many Army Reserve and National Guard Soldiers, especially as many of you are also civilian acquisition professionals. (NOTE: If you are both a Reserve or National Guard Soldier and a civilian acquisition professional, you will maintain your ACRB for your civilian job.)
Once this transition occurs, the standard practice will be that the ORB will be the document of record for Soldiers in the active component, Army National Guard and Army Reserve, and the ERB will be the document of record for NCOs in the active component, Army National Guard and Army Reserve noncommissioned officers. The ACRB will remain the document of record for AAW civilians.
When this effort is instituted, you will still have a CAPMISS account, and access to edit and view your Individual Development Plan, Continuous Learning Points and completed acquisition courses. The information in your CAPMISS account will reflect what is in your ORB or ERB. This means it will be even more important that you maintain the accuracy of those documents.
What does this mean for Reserve or National Guard FA51 Soldiers applying for acquisition certification?
Beginning in late FY19, there will be a new requirement for all Army Reserve and National Guard FA51 Soldiers applying for certification. Applicants will be required to fill out a new form (Army National Guard M-DAY or Army Reserve Troop Program Unit certification application form) detailing the actual number of active-duty days they’ve had for the time period of the application. Once this form is available in the system, the new certification policy will be published. Soldiers will be required to complete this application form, have it certified by a supervisor, and upload it to the Certification Management System in CAPPMIS. By completing this form, the Army DACM Office ensures a layer of assurance for our analysts who process these certifications.
The bottom line is that the use of the ORB or the ERB for Army Reserve and National Guard officers and NCOs will reduce redundancy and improve efficiency both across our systems and with our people. You will no longer have to proactively update your ACRB, saving you time to focus on other priorities.
In the near future, the Army DACM Office will publish additional information to prepare you for this change. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact Lt. Col. Ryan Leonard, Army Reserve, at ryan.d.leonard.mil@mail.mil or 703-664-5719; or Lt. Col. Teresa Childs, Army National Guard, at teresa.e.childs.mil@mail.mil or 703-664-5722.
This article is published in the April edition of the DACM Newsletter.
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