Military Command Software Center - MCS Personnel (Monitor MASS)

[Robert0288]

I have never seen a current REO message in Routine Orders.  Ever.  They've always been on the REO website, which I found usually is up to date.  Mind you I've never been on the processing side of the equation.  But how does limiting the information to a DWAN network, which you can only access at work, help reservists apply for Reserve Employment Opportunities?

Fill out any paperwork you need.  Attach a copy of your Resume, and MPRR which you can download off EMAA and save to your civy email.  Submit by email.  All from the comfort of my own home without needing to travel to an armory, log in, use a computer that might other wise be needed.  From my understanding, would you now need to make a day trip in to the armory just to look at potential employment?

http://armyapp.forces.gc.ca/reo-oer/index.aspx?lang=eng

 

[Help Desk]

I have never seen a current REO message in Routine Orders.  Ever.  They've always been on the REO website, which I found usually is up to date.  Mind you I've never been on the processing side of the equation.  But how does limiting the information to a DWAN network, which you can only access at work, help reservists apply for Reserve Employment Opportunities?

Fill out any paperwork you need.  Attach a copy of your Resume, and MPRR which you can download off EMAA and save to your civy email.  Submit by email.  All from the comfort of my own home without needing to travel to an armory, log in, use a computer that might other wise be needed.  From my understanding, would you now need to make a day trip in to the armory just to look at potential employment?

http://armyapp.forces.gc.ca/reo-oer/index.aspx?lang=eng

Robert
Not so long ago, 6 years to be exact if someone wanted to find an Opportunity they had to go to the BOR or Unit OR and filters though paper copies that Orderly Staff had printed from the Routine Orders and placed in a Binders on the counter, if you had access to the DWAN you needed to go to each different Base's website routine orders and their was no way of telling if the opportunities were filled or not, so often you asked you Chief Clerk to send a message in order to apply for a job that may have been filled already. The Reserve Employment Opportunities you see on the Internet are generated on both the Intranet and Internet simultanously from the REO Module within Monitor MASS where you can all the Jobs by Rank, MOS, Region, etc. The way you submit your nomination from home or work to your Chief Clerk is exactly the way it was intended and is not changing.

 

[cupper]

Maybe HHQs need to stop asking for useless information.  Having computers generate useless information doesn't change its utility one bit.

As well, you still haven't answered the question about the Privacy Impact Assessment.  It's required - where is it?

Plus, any database operated by the government that contains personal information has certain rules and regulations pertaining to data retention and the right of individuals to access that data - is Monitor MASS and its associated applications compliant with those regulations?  Or is it a bunch of folks hacking away, ignoring the rules, and one bad data leak away from disaster?


(Have user access controls been improved?  I remember someone was able, with no audit trail to track them down, to go in and rename 1st and 2nd BNs PPCLI as "Princess Patricia's Canadian Mechanized Infantry".  If foundational data isn't safe from folks making changes and joking around, how can users be certain of data integrity?)

You will find the Privacy Impact Assessment on SharePoint

I am not even going to reply to your other questions as I find then unethical and degrading.

Setting aside the personal commentary at the end of the questions, they are still valid questions and do deserve an answer.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>I am not even going to reply to your other questions as I find then unethical and degrading.

Ha! I wish someone would try that one out on me sometime where I work when I raise a question about operational or personal security information shortcomings.

 

[turretmonster]

Epic fail......  :facepalm:

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

Monitor mass, to me, represents a lot of what is wrong in the military. We used to trust pl comds/pl wo and coy/bty/Sqn staff to, you know, know their people and stuff. All I use it for is to do leave passes, and that's because the CoC makes us (and to be fair the PDF file or god forbid hand written forms were easier). Pdrs/ platoon comds handbook entries off of it are, IMHO, useless and in a way degrading as we are saying we don't trust people to track their own pers (since leadership is hard, but spreadsheets are easy!).

For the money we've dumped into this Ottawa based, impossible to use, micro management experiment we could have done any number of trg/procurement. Even the pips aren't this big of a waste of money.

 

[DonaldMcL]

BobSlob

Can you elaborate your statement in ref to Quote "the UI is terrible” I have no idea what you are referring to.

Sure, the User Interface is terrible. Nothing is laid out logically and you end up mindlessly clicking around until you figure it out... good luck remembering the 34 click pattern (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration) for next time. 

 

[Scott]

Help Desk, a thicker skin might be in order.

 

[Kat Stevens]

I was always taught that if you thought you might not like the answer, better off not asking the question.  Just sayin'

 

[Tibbson]

Sure, the User Interface is terrible. Nothing is laid out logically and you end up mindlessly clicking around until you figure it out... good luck remembering the 34 click pattern (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration) for next time.

I had to use it for limited purposes in my last posting and like you I found that it wasn't laid out very well and once I did find something it was hard to get back into it again in the future.  For what it was worth it was much easier for me to pull up a few PDFs for leave passes and other forms, PASS/VFS for any pers info I needed and/or to go into a simple to use spreadsheet for other tracking.  Once I was posted from the Unit I put this app out of my mind and have never missed it. 

 

[Towards_the_gap]

It's been 2 years now that I've been out, and I haven't thought of that spiteful program once. It never once helped me do my job better. I knew my troops and where they were and only suffered MM enough to print leave passes for them. It seemed like a ridiculous duplication of Peoplesoft or whatever wizardry the clerks were using at the time, and rather than save 'X' resources as Helpdesk claims, ended up wasting more time as personnel tried to navigate the awful interface when they should have been away from their desks conducting/planning training, not feeding bytes of data to the mainframe.

I'm curious. What serious dysfunction in the day-to-day administration of the CF did MM solve?

 

[PuckChaser]

I like it. Its unwieldly, and looks like it was designed to operate on Windows 98 SE, but once I found all the stuff I needed and saved a workspace, I find it useful on a day to day basis. The single best feature is that career courses are placed in their 6 months out, so I can actually plan more than the 2 weeks "surprise, X is going on his PLQ" that normally happened.

It needs A LOT of work on functionality to be accepted CAF wide. I compare it to the CI: Signallers loved it, but everyone else thought it was a useless POS because it had way more information than the average person needed. MonitorMass looks like its trying desperately to duplicate everything HRMS does, and drop it down to the Sect Comd level. That's fine, but do we really need 2 separate systems that don't talk together properly?

 

[Towards_the_gap]

Moreover, does a section commander need that much info?

 

[PuckChaser]

No, there's a crapload in there that isn't needed. That's what adds to the confusion on using it, if I just want a leave pass or to check someone's security clearance date, there's 16 tabs I need to sift through.

 

[Tibbson]

Seems clear now why 78.6% of the people who took the time to answer the lop sided pole don't like the program. 

 

[BC Old Guy]

I found this program very useful when I was working at the unit level.  I could see how it would be useful at the sub-unit level as well, and wish it was available earlier.  However, like all programs, it takes a bit of feeding, and Garbage In - Garbage Out.

 

[Gunner98]

MCS Personnel (Monitor MASS) is available on the DWAN and is now used by 50,000 members across DND

Are there 50,000 active current user accounts or 50,000 people who actually use it regularly? There is a big difference!

 

[Tibbson]

The number of user accounts hardly equates to the number of people who use it regularly.  I know many people, myself included, who have accounts but who haven't bothered with Monitor MASS for some time. 

 

[DAA]

Did you know that the implementation of REO - Reserve Employment Opportunity module is saving 18 PY in the C Army alone since 2009, do the math. If you took a serious look at what our small team is providing for the CAF i.e. MCS Tasking CFTPO, MCS Ranges  (CFRIS), MCS Personnel (Monitor MASS), MCS Establishment, (establishment changes, CFFET, MACR), MEMS, Training Tracker,OJT/OJPR) Ship Management, Sea days, Jumps, Clinician's time, Activity Management, IBTS, Parade State, Readyness Summary, etc you would quickly realise that the service we provide is very much essential and it cost a fraction of what a corporate system would.

The PER tracking system return on investment was 10 folds in the very first year in 2012 in freeing Chief Clerk and Orderly Room / Admin Staff more time to provide support to their members rather than compiling statistics in excel spread sheets for the COC, think about that for a minute, isn't it what everyone has been asking for.

Still, all the systems that you mention above feed data to MM while MM doesn't feed any data back, so now you have MM which is in effect a "stove pipe" system that has created duplication of effort and in turn costs PY's.  CFTPO, HRMS, etc, etc still require data input and are the ONLY recognized "source" of official information.

Like they say, even if you put lip stick on a pig, it's still just pig.

 

[AmmoTech90]

It is not 18 PY for 6 years, it is 18 PY per year, most of those were personnel dedicated to drafttingREO messages, sending them thru the Message Center and publishing then in Routine Orders, that requirement was replaced by the automated publishing process. These figures were provided to us by the Area HQ back then.

So that would be 18 FTEs.  And you haven't answered the question about how many FTEs the MM project takes up or how much it costs.

You will find the Privacy Impact Assessment on SharePoint

Please provide a link because I've looked and searched on your sharepoint and haven't been able to find a file name that included privacy or assessment.  There are no documents in the Official Documents directory.  Your SOCD is just templates as is your PRICIE analysis.  A project being run like this is why the CAF gets a bad reputation for project management.