Development applications: moving 400+ submissions out of encrypted email

Every year, 54 states and territories sent our office more than 400 professional development applications. Each one arrived as an encrypted email. This was 2019, at National Guard Bureau HR (NGB/HRT), Joint Base Andrews.

The problem

Each state's Joint Force Headquarters uploaded its packages to DoD SAFE, which sent an encrypted email to our office's org box. To open one, we clicked the link, retrieved a separate passcode email, entered the code, and downloaded the files.

The only thing a state could see was that we had opened the message. If our team missed an email in the org box, the package was missed. Tracking lived outside the system entirely, so neither side had any real visibility.

Baseline

• 400+ applications a year from 54 states and territories

• Three application processes: enlisted development, officer development, and officer in-residence PME

• A three-person team

• Every package: one email, one passcode email, one download, one manual tracking entry

• No status visibility for states or applicants

What was actually happening

At peak, our three team members worked evening shifts over multiple days just to get packages in the door. Open the email, find the passcode, download, file, log it in an outside tracker. Only then could we start the real work: reviewing packages and getting them ready for the selection panel.

The review wasn't the bottleneck. The email was.

Where it broke

Two places. Intake, where every package needed four manual steps before anyone could look at it. And visibility, where a missed email meant a missed applicant, and no one would know until it was too late.

The change

myPers was already used for case management elsewhere in the Air National Guard. Instead of building something new, I worked with the developers to map our requirements onto it.

• States submitted each application directly in myPers as its own case

• Every case showed status end to end, for both the state and our office

• States and our team could add notes and ask questions inside the case, instead of emailing back and forth about missing items

• Tracking lived in the system itself, replacing the outside tracker

• Our team reviewed packages in myPers, with no more downloading

• Cost: zero. It used a system we already had.

Result

• Team time spent on the submission process: down an estimated 50% across all three application processes

• 400+ applications a year moved from encrypted email into a single tracked workflow

• States gained real-time status and a direct line into each case

• The officer PME process adopted the same approach the next cycle

The 50% is our team's estimate of yearly hours spent downloading, retrieving passcodes, filing, and tracking submissions, before and after. It is not a formal time study.

What I learned

The time sink wasn't the work. It was the work about the work. The fix didn't need a new tool, just mapping our requirements onto one we already had. Before you buy or build, check what's already in the building.

Method

Find where time goes before the real work starts, then remove the handoffs that add no value. In EASIER terms: Ask what happens now, Spot where it breaks, Improve the way, then Review what changed. See all six process guides.

Related free tools

The Process Improvement Toolkit includes SIPOC and value stream mapping templates for finding where time goes before the real work starts. No email required.