DPS Rate Filing Schedule Change

During a briefing at this week’s HHGFAA Annual Meeting, Ralph Meacham, Deputy Program Manager for JPMO-HHGS, announced a change to the schedule for implementation of DPS. The original schedule, announced at the JPMO-HHGS town hall meeting, called for 2 separate rate filings in the spring. One would be in January and would cover the 16 initial bases participating in DPS, and the second rate filing would be in March and would be for all bases world wide. The January rate filing would cover a few months, while the March filing would be for a full 12 month cycle.

During this week’s briefing, Mr. Meacham announced that JPMO-HHGS had decided to eliminate the March rate filing cycle entirely. Therefore, the rate filing that will occur in late January will be for all bases worldwide, and would be for a full 12 month cycle, presumably April 2008 through March 2009.

Many TSPs in attendance expressed concern that this would eliminate any chance for a “learning period”, as well as cause TSPs to make the difficult projection of costs in a brand new program and over a year out in the future. However, Mr. Meacham stated JPMO-HHGS made the change because they believe the DPS software will be able to handle a full rate filing by January, and they were concerned about placing some TSPs at a competitive disadvantage if they did not happen to file rates in the channels between the original 16 bases, and therefore would not have the advantage of a “learning period.”

Update(10/20/07): There has been a new DPS implementation timeline posted on the SDDC website that reflects the rate filing schedule change.

Related Posts

1. Rate Filing Schedule Posted - February 13th, 2007
2. SDDC Posts DPS Rate Filing Schedule, Other Resources - January 25th, 2010
3. DPS Implementation Schedule - September 24th, 2007