SATAF Begins Pre-Deployment Tasks Published Jan. 26, 2012 By Cathy Segal DEAMS Strategic Communications FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill -- Several members of the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System's Site Activation Task Force visited McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., Jan. 9-10 to meet with the host wing commander, unit comptrollers, resource advisors and other active-duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve points of contact that will help pave the way for the new financial management system. DEAMS is scheduled to deploy at McConnell later this year. In addition to meeting face to face with the people that will be directly involved with the deployment, the purpose of the visit was to explain the deployment process and begin pre-deployment activities. Preparations include forming a site-level Change Management Advocacy Board to execute and evaluate the process, and appointing DEAMS Organization Liaisons unit points of contact that are the users' first level of assistance. These groups and individuals will help McConnell through the major activities of individual data collection and role mapping, just-in-time training and deployment. According to Lawrence Watson, government lead for DEAMS Deployment, Change Management and Training, designated base points of contact will participate in weekly teleconferences with the SATAF to plan activities and discuss progress. "The first thing most users will see is a pre-deployment Change Readiness Survey that will measure any potential resistance to the change," Watson said. "That will help us adapt our communications, training and other deployment activities to their levels of acceptance." Watson said that following the survey, which will be distributed later this month, the SATAF will return to McConnell to finalize preparations for registering users for DEAMS accounts and to conduct a Change Management workshop with unit points of contact and liaisons. The workshop will include a town hall-style meeting with users to describe what DEAMS is and does, conduct a live demonstration of DEAMS, and answer questions from the audience. Users will begin registering for DEAMS accounts after unit liaisons have been instructed in how to collect the data. During user data collection and registration, users identify what DEAMS responsibilities they will need to perform their jobs. In addition to assigning proper permissions in DEAMS, the information also helps the training team determine individual courses each user must complete before they can access DEAMS. According to Watson, self-paced online training will begin 90 days prior to go live, and instructor-led training will begin 60 days prior. Users will be notified of their required courses and training schedules. "We purposefully schedule training as close to the actual go-live date as we can so users don't have a lot of time in between where they'll forget what they learned," Watson said. McConnell will be the first site to use DEAMS since it was deployed at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., in July 2007 and May 2010 as a two-phased technical demonstration. Unlike Scott AFB, McConnell and all future sites will receive all activated DEAMS capabilities in a single phase. DEAMS is an Air Force initiative using industry-proven Oracle® software to provide war fighters with timely, accurate and reliable financial information. It replaces decades-old technology that no longer complies with federal law and Department of Defense regulations. Capabilities consist of commitment accounting; general accounting; project accounting; revenue and billing; and property, plant and equipment. DEAMS also contains a civilian timekeeping capability that will be activated sometime in the future. DEAMS is being deployed across the Air Force in a series of releases under two increments through 2016. The rest of the AMC bases will follow McConnell beginning in fiscal year 2013. Deployments will occur by major command in future releases. More information about DEAMS is available at www.ustranscom.mil/deams.