In the long term, the uses and benefits of CCP will be extensive. It will give all officers better access and control of their pay. Self-service tools will allow individuals to manage their tax profile and control the distribution of their net pay to savings accounts, insurance companies, charities, U.S. Savings Bonds, and the like. Personnel orders will be totally reformatted making them more informative and readable. In addition, CCP eventually will be used as a tool to request, approve, and manage leave. This will allow future earning statements to include current leave balances as the separate Commissioned Officers Leave Tracking System (COLTS) is phased out.
In the short term however, the impact on the active duty officer will be minimal. Self-service transactions will not be a part of Phase I deployment. What will be different is the officer’s use of CCP to access earning statements, personnel orders, and other official communications from OCCSS, OCCFM, and OCCO. If the final phase of CCP testing is successful, officers will receive their final earnings statements from the legacy system in late December 2007. It will include the officer’s unique CCP USERID (user identification). Within days following, officers will receive a letter containing an initial password plus instructions on how to access CCP via the Internet. At that time, all officers should log onto the CCP Web site to ensure accessibility. If an officer has not received a letter by 14 January 2008, or has technical questions about accessing the CCP Web site, the officer should call the Corps help desk at (301) 594-0961. On initial logon, each officer will be required to establish a personal password, and then log back onto the CCP Web site using the updated password. Officers should take a tour of the Web site and review the demographic data. Here are some key dates and milestones in the implementation timeline:
- Late December or early January: Officers will receive their last mailed earning statement from the legacy payroll system.
- Mid-January: Officers will be able to log onto the CCP Web site and see expected pay for January 2008 (assuming Congress has finalized all cost-of-living allowances (COLAs) and housing figures). The ability to project expected pay into the following month is one of the many benefits of the new system. In addition, as soon as personnel orders affecting an officer become official, an electronic copy of that order will appear in the officer’s CCP inbox.
- 28 January 2008: Officers should log onto the CCP Web site to view (and print) their first earning statement from the new system (officers will receive an e-mail notifying them that their earning statement is ready for viewing). These electronic statements will be retained indefinitely so that officers can easily review old ones at anytime. Officers should compare the electronic statement to the earnings statement received in the mail.
- Early February 2008: Officers will be mailed their 2007 W-2 from the legacy system. It will be sent to the same address as the officer’s December earning statement. In the future, W-2s will be provided electronically soon after the final paycheck for the year is prepared. Officers will be able to view and print them from their CCP inbox. In the years to come, old W-2s (prepared by CCP) will be accessible online as well.
- 25 February 2008: Officers should log onto the CCP Web site to view and print their earnings statements. No earning statements will be mailed to officers after January 2008.
- Spring 2008: CCP will begin accepting certain electronic self-service transactions. These may include changes to an officer’s W-4, bank information, insurance allotment, Thrift Savings Program, etc. During the transition period, officers will have the option of either keying these changes in themselves and instantly viewing the effect to their net pay distribution, or sending the paperwork to the Compensation Branch (CB), OCCSS/PSC, and have CB enter the data as was done in the past. Also, OCCO will stop mailing personnel orders to officers and Commissioned Corps Liaisons and rely solely on the CCP Web site for their distribution.
- Later in 2008: Additional transactions may be added to the self-service menu list such as the purchase of U.S. Savings Bonds, Combined Federal Campaign charity participation, etc. Also, use of CCP self-service will become mandatory for many routine actions such as an officer updating his/her payroll address and W-4 changes. Of course, if the officer’s personal work situation makes it a hardship to access the CCP Web site, the officer may continue to use CB.
- In late 2008 or early 2009: Officers’ leave balances will be transferred from the COLTS system to CCP, and updated when the officer returns from leave. Request and approval of leave will be managed via CCP (the officer’s leave approver, whether a Corps officer or civilian, will need a CCP account as well; more on that in later articles in the electronic Commissioned Corps Bulletin).
Be sure to check the electronic Commissioned Corps Bulletin for future articles on the transition to CCP. In the meantime, any questions or concerns should be e-mailed to cchelpdesk@psc.gov.