The Corps has continually upgraded the Marine Corps Total Force System, the 39-year-old mainframe system that manages the service’s pay and personnel processes. For example, the Corps gave the platform a Web makeover that gives MCTFS users a browser window called Marine Online (MOL). The result: an easy-to-use manpower system that hosts 498,000 records for active, reserve and retired Marines and averages a semimonthly payroll of $238 million. Its Big Iron power offers reliability and security to rival modern servers.

“People pooh-pooh mainframes and Cobol, but a lot of the big corporations are going back” to this platform, says Maj. John Postorino, director of manpower information system support at the Corps data center in Kansas City. “The architecture of MCTFS is open, extensible and scalable,” he says, adding that “Cobol’s natural language statements greatly simplify maintenance and enhancement tasks.”

The mainframe system is powerful enough to manage a single database for all of the service’s pay and personnel records, and the single source of data eliminates redundant, outdated and conflicting information stored on multiple small systems.

The Corps gave MCTFS a longevity boost a couple years ago through the MOL upgrade. “The creation of an MCTFS Web-enabled front end has given Marines and their commanders instant access to time-sensitive, decision-enabling information,” Postorino says.

In the future, the MOL/MCTFS combo will help the Corps cope with cutbacks in the administrative ranks.

One current proposal calls for an 11 percent decrease for this group. Accordingly, the Corps is looking for ways to more fully automate human resources processing and payroll accounting, while simultaneously reducing training time for MCTFS users.

Still unresolved is the status of MCTFS once the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, Defense’s departmentwide HR system, moves from the planning stages to full implementation in the years ahead. Postorino declines to elaborate, saying only that “the Marine Corps believes in the concept and capabilities of DIMHRS.”

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