Navy Unveils System Meant to Counter Pay Delays, Other Paperwork Holdups

Trying to combat delays in pay and personnel requests for sailors, the Navy has rolled out a dashboard that will give leaders at every command the ability to see an overview of their sailors' requests.

The sea service says that the tool will let command leadership "gain insight into the status of their Sailors' initiated, submitted, and pending pay and personnel cases" and take ownership of getting those problems resolved quickly.

The rollout comes after months of reported backlogs for sailors in various parts of the fleet tied to delays in getting paperwork or pay. Navy leaders have explained that many of these issues stem from the service's efforts to modernize and standardize how it handles those transactions.

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Cmdr. Jason Grose, the commanding officer of the Navy Pay and Personnel Support Center, told Military.com in a phone call Thursday that the new platform "allows the CO to now take ownership of their sailor pay."

Grose, who previously commanded a reserve center in Georgia, confessed that, as a commander, he "had no idea what was going on with any of my sailor pay transactions." However, now, "I can pull up the dashboard, I can easily go to my command, I can look at the status of all my cases."

From there, Grose said that leaders can zero in on cases that have been kicked back to the command's clerks because of issues or errors. The dashboard would allow leaders to see whether a request has been pending for an extended period, prompting action.

The other hope is that commands can use the new tool to spot trends like too many returned transactions. "I can say, 'Hey, I've got a knowledge gap here, my [clerk] needs some training,' and then I can actually request for some targeted training," Grose explained.

Although this solution is not geared toward helping sailors who have been impacted by delays in the Navy processing key discharge paperwork, the tool should help with services that many active-duty sailors need accomplished.

In November, Military.com also reported that issues cropped up in getting students of the Navy's nuclear power school their housing allowances on time. And in an interview with Military.com last fall, Rear Adm. Stuart Satterwhite, Grose's boss, said that the service was also struggling with delays in processing things like reimbursing sailors after they move for new orders.

Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, the man who oversees the Navy's entire personnel management system, posted in a Facebook comment Wednesday that "the current monthly average is 14 days" for a move claim.

"That said, it still takes about two months for [the Navy] to receive an actionable claim," Cheeseman noted, before adding that "this is the time we must attack and my team is working with waterfront/local leaders to better understand the barriers here."

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: Nuclear School Sailors Run into Housing Pay Delays