Daycos News

Note: This is the first in a series of posts looking at the concern over the DPS system performance during peak season.…
One week into this years peak season, there are still a lot of reasons for all participants in the DP3 program to be nervous about this summer. However, it seems like there is one overriding issues that is most concerning to industry and government, and that is the reliability and stability of the DPS computer system.
This is

As you might expect given the recent DPS system issues, JPMO-HHGS’ March Monthly Activity Report (formerly known as the WAR report) contained numerous references to the system’s problems and downtime. Col. Mike Miller noted in his executive summary that system uptime for March was 95%, which is below their goal of 98%. Col. Miller went on to note:

“In addition, we formed a Tiger Team with representatives from across the enterprise to come to root cause and to fix …

…Last summer, lots of things went wrong during the peak season of personal property moves. One of the few things that performed better than expected was the reliability of the DPS computer system. While it may not have always been the fastest or easiest to use software in existence, for the most part DPS did not suffer any major technical problems that rendered it unusable for long periods of time.
As we head into the upcoming 2011 peak season, not

…A recent change in DPS programming will cause a delay in the payment of all DPS invoice payments. We have been informed by the help desk, and later confirmed by a JPMO-HHGS employee, that all invoices will take between 2 and 5 days to move from DPS to the US Bank payment system once all line items have been approved or denied. Previous to this change, those invoices would move for payment in less than 24 hours of being approved

The rating of SIT and related charges in DPS has always been a difficult process, and recently JPMO-HHGS discovered a rating issue that will affect many SIT invoicing charges. We had identified that DPS was using the wrong SIT rates in a number of circumstances, and had opened multiple help desk tickets for incorrect rates. Investigating those problems, JPMO-HHGS determined that DPS was programmed to use the SIT rates for the installation location on the GBL, instead of the delivery…

Last month a patch was installed on the DPS system that, among other problems, caused all invoice transmissions between DPS and the US Bank payment system to error out, delaying thousands of invoices. This problem received a lot of attention, mainly because anything that keeps TSPs from getting paid always gets a lot of attention. However, it also was noteworthy because it was a very unusual occurrence. Fortunately, there have been very few major invoicing problems in the short history…

Last week, during the  NDTA Annual Forum in Washington, DC, there were a few sessions related to household goods. Col. Mike Miller from JPMO-HHGS and Lt. Col. Derek Oliver from SDDC each gave an update during one session, and here are some notes from those presentations:

• As expected, there was lots of discussion around the peak season issues:
  • SDDC reported that during July and August, roughly 7% of shipments delivered past the RDD.
  • Lt. Col. Oliver stated that many of

…

We haven’t heard any official word yet, but it appears that the invoicing payment problem… caused by the last week’s DPS patch may be resolved. We had heard that Syncada was receiving invoices from DPS for the first time since last week, so we ran a query on our invoices. Sure enough, we can confirm that some DPS rated invoices have been transmitted to Syncada today to be matched for payment. It appears they are resending the invoices that have

We have a quick update to our earlier post on the problem in DPS that has halted all payments. Today we have been forwarded the following message, apparently sent to PPSOs from JPMO-HHGs:

BLUF: Please have your clerks stop processing invoices for 13-15 Sep 2010
With the 1.4.03 release has caused an invoice transmission problem with DPS to US Bank.
DPS has stopped sending (processed invoices 858′s) back to us bank for payment until a patch is deployed.
We will …

One consistent request from  industry to the government has been for more information to be shared, so that TSPs can better plan and allocate resources. Recently,  a new section labeled DPS Monthly Metrics has been added to the TSP Resources page of the Move.mil website. This section appears to be a step in the right direction of sharing info with TSPs, as it contains a series of informational charts and data sets including:

• Shipment Numbers
• DPS vs TOPS HHG Volume

…