MyForms Hell
The military is very concerned with our impact on the environment. As long as I’ve been in the military, I’ve had to follow very stringent guidelines when it comes to any possible environmental impact as it relates to fuel, animals, waste, recycling, etc.
We are required to keep drip pans under EVERY single vehicle in our motor pools. The drip pans are supposed to catch any leaks on vehicles or other fuel consumable equipment. Any time we accidentally spill fuel, oil or other lubricant we are required to immediately report it. The report is sent up to the EPA monitor on that particular post.
At Fort Stewart, there are literally hundreds of acres of wasted land that we’re not allowed to train on because of the endangered spotted owl. That means no shooting, no camping, no driving, no nothing! And on the land that we DO conduct training, we have to do an assessment on the land to make sure they aren’t affected by our operating nearby.
At Fort Stewart, it was the spotted desert ass and the desert tortoise. When I first got there in 1996, they were talking about widening the thirty mile, two lane road that stretched from the post to the nearest town of Barstow. The widening was put on hold because the enviro-nazis in southern California were concerned about the impact on the turtle. So, the military waited while the study was conducted. By the time construction was ready to move forward again years later, the cost of the project had increased and more money had to be appropriated. Once it was finally appropriated another protest was lodged and investigation conducted into the environmental impact. This caused the military (or better said, you the taxpayer) to pay MORE money to build these little two foot tall “turtle fences” along the entire length of the road. Additionally, if a turtle strayed into the military training areas and was run over by a tank or vehicle, all training stopped and we were required to submit a report on the time, location, and circumstances surrounding the untimely death of this turtle.
We also conduct all or most of our travel completely paperless as well. Whereas, we used to have to create numerous paper vouchers and authorizations, it’s all accomplished online now. No need to print out tickets. No need to print out orders. No need to print out vouchers and submit paper receipts. It’s all digital.
More recently, the military has gone through great strides to reduce the amount of paperwork we produce. More and more, all the administration procedures have become automated. When I first got to my current unit, I learned about a program called “MyForms”. MyForms is an online program, only accessed through our military ID cards in which we create and process all our leave forms, evaluations, administrative requests, and other documents. The forms can be digitally signed and up the chain electronically.
The problem with the darn thing is that most of the time you can’t sign your forms. When you click on the link to sign a document, it checks the certificates on your ID card and permissions and “signs” the document with a unique time code and signature. There are a lot of timelines placed on the submission of awards and evaluations and not being able to sign one really throws a wrench into the system. For example, there are no less than four leave forms that I can’t sign because the system either isn’t working or doesn’t recognize my CAC. I think I’d rather be killing trees than dealing with the frustration of MyForms. I sure hope the Army figures out some way to fix this before I put a boot through my processor!!
