ARLINGTON, Va. -- Master Sgt. Dimas Fonseca, Headquarters Department of the Army G1, Team IPPS-A, was recently awarded the Maj. Gen. Nathan Towson Finance Corps Regimental Medallion and the AFCEA Military IT Leadership Award.
MSG Fonseca earned both awards by distinguishing himself from his peers with exemplary service to the U.S. Army Finance Corp during his functional oversight of the implementation of the Integrated Personnel and Pay System -- Army (IPPS-A) which is the Army's new 21st century Human Resources system.
"Being on this program is an honor," said MSG Fonseca. "It feels good to have all the work and time I put into the implementation of this system be recognized."
MSG Fonseca joined the program roughly five years ago, and has become a subject matter expert on IPPS-A financial and pay impacting transactions. Additionally, he has spearheaded several initiatives that have impacted the implementation of IPPS-A. Notably, he ensured the United States Property and Fiscal Office (USPFO) maintained their statutory requirements and facilitated the approval of the transition of 18 military pay functions from both a centralized and installation level that helped the Army regain control of its military pay. This will ensure a smooth military pay transition from Financial Managers to Human Resource Professionals within the Army as IPPS-A is incrementally deployed across the Total Force.
"The USPFO maintaining their statutory requirements means each state USPFO is able to validate the accuracy of their payroll as directed by law," said MSG Fonseca. "This makes us compliant with the law and allows the Army to have an accurate financial statement to provide to Congress."
During the IPPS-A Release 2 design and build phase, MSG Fonseca intensively coordinated with DFAS leadership to establish data mapping, testing, and validation procedures for pay impacting transactions. The output of these transactions, known as Transaction Identification Numbers (TINs), are produced as a result of an HR business process in IPPS-A and sent thru an interface from IPPS-A to the Defense Joint Military Pay System -- Reserve Component (DJMS-RC) system. This coordination yielded the successful implementation of 26 TINS, or pay impacting actions, in Release 2 and has resulted in on-time and accurate Soldier pay.
From August thru December, 2018, MSG Fonseca was integral to the IPPS-A Risk Reduction Event (RRE) and System Acceptance Test (SAT) to ensure system logic performed as designed and assisted the system integrator to make adjustments when system defects were identified.
Identifying and resolving these defects were crucial for IPPS-A going live in Pennsylvania.
"Resolving those defects built confidence in users and ensured an accurate outbound interface with DJMS-RC," said MSG Fonseca. "This reduced the manual workload required by the USPFO and G-1 to correct Soldiers pay records."
According to the award citation, MSG Fonseca's impeccable attention to detail led to a successful Limited User Test (LUT) of IPPS-A and validated that the military pay actions within the program correctly interfaced with (DJMS-RC).
Though pleased to have received the Maj. Gen. Nathan Towson Finance Corps Regimental Medallion and the AFCEA Military IT Leadership Award, MSG Fonseca is more proud of the progress IPPS-A has made as a program.
"I take a lot of pride in receiving these awards," said MSG Fonseca. "There were people several years ago who swore this program was never going live. Well, we're live in four states. I take a lot of pride in that fact."
Social Sharing