Helping Military Families Move

The Challenge

The Defense Personal Property System (DPS) is the logistics system for shipments of personal goods of more than 1.3 million servicemembers, 700,000 civilians, and their families. However, after a production update on March 10, 2017, DPS crashed. Pages took over five minutes to respond, which is comparable to a non-functioning site. The poor usability and functionality of DPS is a major stress factor for military and civilian families who are in the midst of frequent relocations across the globe, and contributes to numerous failures and delays of family household goods being shipped inappropriately and arriving late to their intended destination.

The Solution

DDS deployed a rapid response team to provide immediate remediation, and in just four days made major headway on rescuing the site. After the DDS response, DPS users reported significantly reduced latency rates, allowing more than 4,500 concurrent users—the most DPS has ever supported. Most importantly, successful shipment requests and scheduling increased from 16 percent to more than 99 percent. DDS continues to work with the U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) to modernize and evolve the DPS system into a system on par with private-sector sites in terms of user experience and performance.

Update

USTRANSCOM has approved funding for initial development of a prototype system to more efficiently process relocations by military members and their families. DDS recently selected a highly vetted software company to execute development efforts under the close product guidance of DDS. DDS spent six months actively developing the related informational site Move.mil, which is the primary resource for military families and their spouses during their frequent relocations around the globe. Move.mil relaunched in November 2017, and was developed through constant user feedback from servicemembers, their spouses, and DoD transportation support staff. The website includes updated content, new features, and a suite of tools to greatly reduce the burden on military families during the stress of relocation.

Impact

This project was previously chronicled in our July 2017 Report to Congress.