I__. - International Military Testing Association

NPT ENEANCEN.ENTS To TEE
OCCUPATIODlAIi RBSBARCE DATA BAXX:
Joe Menchaca, Jr., Capt, USAF
Jody A. Guthals, 2Lt, USAF
Air Force Human Resources Laboratory (AFHRL/MOD)
Brooks Air Force Base, Texas
Lou Olivier, Glenda Pfeiffer
OAO Corporation
INTRODUCTION
The Occupational Research Data Bank (ORDB) is an on-line, data
repository providing users immediate access to a variety of
occupational information about Air Force specialties (AFS) and the
people who perform duties in them. The combination of several
unique subsystems gives ORDB the ability to retrieve many otherwise
dispersed sets of data from a consolidated data bank. Instead of
the normal laborious and time-consuming task of finding personnel
background information by formal requests to computer data bases,
searching Air Force regulations, or searching a library of
technical reports and previous studies, the ORDB allows the user to
streamline occupational data retrieval by providing easy access to
data from all these sources. Two years ago a paper was presented
discussing some planned enhancements and applications of the ORDB
to assist manpower, personnel, and training (MPT) decision makers
and analysts in the acquisition of Air Force weapon systems
(Longmire and Short 1988). The purpose of this paper is to
describe implementation of these enhancements and discuss some
actual MPT applications.
BACKGROUND/OVERVIEW
Plans for the development of the ORDB began in 1978. While
vast quantities of information were available about Air Force
occupations, the data were widely dispersed among various different
organizations, with many different formats, and degrees of
coverage. At that time, the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory
(AFHRL) maintained 29 different types of computer files from by
many different sources. Also, AFHRL housed Air Force technical
reports dating back to 1943 and was the official Air Force
repository of all occupational study data files generated by the
USAF Occupational Measurement Center (USAFOMC). Other organizations
(HQ USAF, ATC, AFMPC, etc.) had their own data bases and generated
numerous recurring reports, regulations, and studies.
Occupational researchers needed consolidated information that was
easily and rapidly accessible.