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System Evaluation Essay One of the most prevalent and effective systems used within the Marine Corps is the human resources system known as Marine Online (MOL). MOL was created to track Marines annual training, allow special requests such as leave, liberty, temporary duty assignments, personal time away from duty. MOL also gives Marines the ability to track carrier progression through annual reporting and rewards that are posted. The system includes promotion tracking and allows one to calculate physical training scores such as physical fitness training scores and combat fitness-training scores. The system allows Marines to track pay and leave in incremental amounts allowing one to view pay 15 days prior to being paid. The need for the system has been ever present and before its implementation everything was stored on paper and word of mouth. The system has helped the Corps as a whole because it creates a platform for many different types of data to be stored and calculates data automatically allowing data to be requested at a moment notice. The requirements of the Marine Corps that drove the system development of MOL are many in number but the need that drove the creation of it the most was how large the organization is. The Marine Corps size can vary from 200k to 400k including reserves. Commanders needed a system that would allow them to view leave and performance reports at a moments notice. In the process of creating the system they found there were many other facets of records they could include in the system. By digitizing these records they would be viewable by every Marine. This in turn allowed the Marine Corps to save hundreds of millions of dollars because they could reduce the number of departments. The Marine Corps had the ability to centralize all of the departments and reduce the amount of paper waste along with wasted man hours. In the past Marines would have to go to several separate departments to view the same information. The original system was only created to track only two areas of information. When the Marine Corps did their assessment of the system they found it to be so helpful they asked commanders if there was anything else they could add to the system to make it easier to track Marines carrier and allow individuals the ability to do the same. Allowing the individual Marines the ability to view these reports at a moments notice has allowed the organization as a whole to appeal to a much higher standard and expectation of the Marines. An example of a new tool that has been implemented in the system MOL is in the Marine Times â€Å"Use of the new communications tool, accessible through Marine Online, or MOL, will be mandatory for nearly the entire Corps by the end of February. † (Sanborn, 2011, para. 2). The use of this new communication tool has allowed family’s to stay in contact with loved ones while deployed over seas. The new system has improved almost every facet of the organization the basic use of the Marine Online System is to allow tracking of Marines to the commanders in the Marines Corps with the simple click of a mouse. The system has grown to so much more than it was originally created for allowing the growth of the Marine Corps in many other areas. Some likely future developments of the system will be the incorporation of medical and dental records. The system will probably be updated to include service record books to allow Marines individual records to be recorded electronically. The information system will eventually grow to allow every Marine to track every portion of their carrier to include new functions that were never though possible or never thought were needed. Something that has not been incorporated into the system is a mobile aspect but in the near future there will be. â€Å"In 2011, the Department of Defense announced it was creating a special online app store for members of the military so that they could download mobile apps that had been vetted for security issues† (Turban, Volonino, Wood, 2013, p. 88). Security has always been an issue for the Department of Defense (DOD) when creating mobile portions of their information systems. This is something that has repressed their ability to expand into the mobile business as of late the security of mobile system has become ever stronger and allowed the DOD to expand its information systems. Conclusion The MOL system has transformed how the Marine Corps functions in many different ways. The IS has allowed the organization as a whole to reduce aste and streamline the data it collects to a central location. Requirements of the system have always been present within the organization until recently has not been reasonably attainable with the amount of employees within the organization. The ultimate drive of the system is unit readiness and the unit readiness is easily quantifiable within the system because the commanders within the Marine Corps have instant access to the information required to gauge it. Unit readiness is the ability to leave at a moments notice when called upon by the president or congress to deploy to a war zone. The type and basic uses of the system are some of the most essential parts of the IS. Without the basic use of this system the Marine Corps as a whole would be at a loss without the use of it. In essence the application of this system has changed the business processes of the Marine Corps as a whole.