Information Management

Registration Processing

The Data Management Center (DMC), in Great Lakes, Illinois, continues to make data processing improvements and reduce manual resource requirements. However, reduced staffing levels, a four-week government shutdown, and increased work volumes caused computer processing and overall service quality and timeliness to be lower than in prior years. While most requests for data processing services were completed on or ahead of the due date, registration processing was 16 days behind the customary rate by year's end.

Registration Information Office (RIO) Workload Increases

The automated telephone system the public uses to verify a man's Selective Service registration was expanded to include a Spanish interface. Additional changes were made so that 75 percent of the responses can be handled automatically without operator assistance, as compared to 68 percent last year.

During FY 1996, more than 755,000 calls were received at the DMC. This is a 22 percent increase over FY 1995. Of these calls, 75 percent were handled by a voice response processing system, which is a seven percent increase over last year.

Many calls involved providing information on more than one registrant. There were 865,000 inquiries. An additional 149,000 written inquiries were processed. The majority of inquiries were from men applying for Federal and state entitlement programs, many of which require young men to provide proof of registration with Selective Service.

Status Information Letters Sent to Thousands

The number of individuals requesting status information letters continues to be substantial. These letters are requested by men who failed to register before their 26th birthday and are now perhaps applying for an entitlement, citizenship, or employment which requires proof of Selective Service registration. During FY 1996, nearly 19,000 cases were researched.

Support to Other Agencies

Since March 1984, Selective Service has assisted a major program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Child Support Enforcement, in locating "deadbeat parents." This year Selective Service matched files for nearly 2.9 million individuals and provided addresses for over 1.2 million matching records.

Selective Service provides the Corporation for National Service and the National Civilian Community Corps with automated and manual letter processing.

Technical Enhancements to Agency Equipment

The Agency-wide conversion to Windows software for personal computers was completed in FY 1996. All employees were given in-house orientation training on the software they are using.

The conversion effort began for updating the mainframe computer-based data base management system; from a System 2000 (S2k) to IBM DB2.

Telecommunications equipment at National Headquarters and the DMC was replaced this year to increase capacity and bandwidth. Both are needed to meet the demands of the Windows operating environment, graphical interfaces, and future growth demands.

Conversion to Windows NT on a new National Headquarters network server, began in the latter part of FY 1996 and will be completed in FY 1997. The Regions' office network servers were also upgraded and converted to the Windows NT system. When the conversion is completed, the four network servers at National Headquarters will be combined into one. All servers will then be on the same network operating system. This will allow more efficient and effective network management and will provide additional server capacity.

A Complete Intelligent Character/Optical Character Recognition System

The Agency installed an Intelligent Character/Optical Recognition System. It allows the electronic scanning and capture of most data on registration forms. Data that the scanner cannot interpret are presented to an operator for review and manual entry. This new system expedites the data entry process.