For those interested in the long version … Grab a cup of coffee and prop your feet up…let’s start with a short database lesson.

what is eMILPO: when you go to an S1 shop, sit down next to a desk to update your DD93/SGLI, you sit there for a few minutes, then you insert your CAC into an external card reader, and hopefully they have you check addresses and names of family, check pay, etc for these documents, and then you sign those insurance documents…you are in eMILPO. This is the foundational system for how personnel data is entered in the Army (some exclusions apply, see HRC for details; this is stuff like retention codes after a Soldier re-ups). This is the system that you get slotted in an assignment in, where your awards are added, your address updated, APFT data entered (DTMS aside), DLPT scores entered, Army schools entered. Everything* (again, minor exceptions apply; your PULHES data is from your last PHA) on the ORB can be entered into eMILPO. But therein lies the problem because there’s another system called TOPMIS II (2).
What is TOPMISII: To my understanding, the ORB was designed to take the data out of eMILPO and upload it into the fillable form we call the ORB, and then let it be read in TOPMISII. Now, TOPMISII is actually a Strength system. That means if I know the codes for BDE and DIV levels, I can pull Gains and Losses for those levels. Really helpful when you, say, doing USR or trying to figure our what MOS needs to be the silver bullet to ask for (hint: it’s not one on your gains roster, HRC is already tracking you as getting someone). But something else that TOPMIS *used* to do (effective early October, 2017) is anyone with write-access to TOPMIS (translation: S1 shop OICs, BDE S1 officers) could log in and literally write over anything on the ORB of an officer in your approved hierarchy. So, depending on the permissions given, anywhere from anyone in your BN to anyone in your BDE. Take a moment to imagine that via this analogy: Instead of you going ot the bank, dropping off an envelope of cash, then having to wait 48-72 hours (excluding weekends) for you to access the funds, now someone can go into this website that sort of talks to the bank and just change over a decimal point. Poof! Now you have $1,000.00 and not 10.00. It’s the same principle. eMILPO is the system of record. It’s less about if something is ‘on the ORB’ then if it is ‘in the system’ (plus uploaded into your iPERMS). In TOPMIS, an S1 logs in and can just type over your Assignment History. Look, now you aren’t a gobblygook LT, you’re a reconnasaince platoon leader. And it even matches your OER to boot. Oh, and finally, updates in TOPMIS take effect immediately (FWIW, this is the same as, say, you flagging a Soldier and then the S1 shop send your back verification of the transaction plus an ERB that shows the flag, just a different system… #BecauseOfficersAreDifferent).

So, what’s the problem with doing everything for officers in TOPMIS? Well, a few reasons: 1 – it’s a cosmetic update, it doesn’t make it valid unless its in eMILPO; 2 – the system was designed to come out of eMILPO and into TOPMIS, not the other way around. Furthermore, if an officer has some things done in eMILPO and some done in TOPMIS, it becomes guesswork if something will update. TOPMIS override eMILPO, but it’s really, really hard to undo that override (for reasons akin to the existence of rainbow unicorns). But seeing as eMILPO and TOPMIS don’t really play well together, sometimes it just becomes inevitable that an S1 will have to do an update in TOPMIS. Lastly, it encourages all officers to come directly to the S1 OIC (because I personally would not give a junior Soldier write access to TOPMIS) and thereby disrupting patterns of work in the Shop. The S1’s primary job is nowhere near solely doing ORB updates, but when word gets out that ‘the S1 can hook you up, takes 5 mins and it got printed right away!’, well, it’s hard to close Pandora’s Box again.

Now let’s bring in the idea of IPPSA. Basically, people working on IPPSA have to collapse down (i.e. get rid of) other databases so a smaller amount of systems are feeding data into IPPSA. What I just described with eMILPO and TOPMIS? Imagine that over a dozen or two systems. That’s chaos. So, Big Army said, “right, these S1s update assignment instructions in TOPMIS? Well we’ve been telling them for YEARS not to do it.” (really, they have, I can attest to that) “and now we’re going to take away the access for them to do. And not only access, we are going to disable the capability for the system itself to do it. Now everyone will do all updates for all ORBs and ERBs in eMILPO!” And then everyone has world peace, right? Except …. Remember how I keep saying eMILPO and TOPMIS don’t q-u-i-t-e get along? Well, what if I’m an S1 and you’ve just entered the battalion, and I’m trying to do the Right Thing and I’m determined to update your new assignment in eMILPO only. I update it, and 2 days later I can see if it hit your ORB. But it didn’t, so now I have to delete the assignment and try again. So now we wait 2-3 more business days to see if it took. So after a week of working on this, we try maybe another method, but after a while, we both are irritable about this, the S1 has other work to do and so finally just does it the Wrong Way via TOPMIS. So your ORB is finally current and we both go on our merry ways. But I don’t know how that will shake out once these TOPMIS capabilities are taken away. It’s going to be interesting to see, and quite possibly quite distracting from mission, too.