EDS Gets $132M to Expand Army Recruiting Capabilities

Electronic Data Systems Inc. of Plano, Texas, announced Oct. 11 it won a five-year, $132 million General Services Administration contract to enhance the Army's Web-enabled recruiting system.


The Army Recruiting Information Support System enables Army personnel to sign up recruits from any location nationwide. It also allows Army and National Guard recruiters to collect and verify information to prepare an enlistment for potential soldiers and send that information to military entrance processing stations.


The Army intends to replace its Recruiting and Accession Data System with ARISS. Both systems were developed by EDS, which has worked with the Army Recruiting Command and the National Guard Bureau for 17 years.


ARISS allows recruiters to work from virtual offices with their workstations containing a multimedia sales presentation, electronic enlistment forms, office automation and e-mail.

Under the new contract, EDS will help recruiting command move toward a paperless system that uses electronic signatures and electronic records management to faster process new Army personnel. EDS also will continue its integration support for the recruiting command's many IT products and system enhancements.


The project ultimately will result in the largest replicating virtual office environment of its kind, with a mobile sales force of more 10,000 Army personnel, said Al Edmonds, president of U.S. Federal and Government Accounts for EDS' Information Solutions unit.


EDS will provide IT support services primarily out of its Fort Knox, Ky., data center, with help from regional data centers in St. Louis; Alexandria, Va.; and Indianapolis. It will also receive product development support from other U.S. offices.


The Army Recruiting Information Support System includes five modules. They assign recruiters to prospects by zip code, coordinate recruiting goals and statistics, identify high school graduates as leads, test recruits for aptitude and assignments and analyze data to improve the recruiting process.

EDS has modernized a personnel module to manage recruiters and has provided other tools that allow the Army to monitor the recruiting process daily.