The Air Force has launched a new mobile app that aims to provide airmen necessary information for their lives and careers — and might one day allow them to use Common Access Card-secured sites on their phones.
The app, called Air Force Connect, will allow all types of Air Force organizations to deliver information to their airmen, their families and the local community, the Air Force said in an April 10 release. The app now can be downloaded from Google Play and Apple’s app store.
To get relevant, local information tailored to them in the app, airmen can add their unit as a “Favorite.” They can then swipe left and right to find features such as directories, checklists, groups, polling, events, physical fitness test calculators and notifications — and customize what they want to see.
There are now about 100 units in the Favorites portal, the release said, and more are being added. The Air Force said that if an airman can’t find his unit on the Favorites list, he should contact his local public affairs office to have it added.
A boom operator instructor from the 22nd Air Refueling Wing at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas won the Air Force’s first Spark Tank innovation prize for creating a new, more ergonomic platform for operators like himself.
The team working on the app is now beta-testing a feature that would allow them to use their CAC with the phone. Airmen would pair their device with a mobile CAC reader, plug in their card, and log on to sites such as the Defense Travel System, the Air Force Portal and Webmail to access encrypted emails.
Other CAC sites that might become available on a mobile phone with this feature include eFinance, Air Force Reserve Command Network, the Volunteer Reserve System, the Reserve Management Vacancy System and the Virtual Personnel Center.
Though Air Force Connect did not win last year’s Spark Tank contest, Air Force officials were impressed enough by the team’s idea to give them money to buy several thousand mobile CAC readers, which are being distributed to units across the force.
“You can actually file your DTS voucher completely on your mobile device,” Trinh said at the Spark Tank panel at the Air Force Association’s Air Warfare Symposium in February 2018.
The team intends to study information from the beta test and, later this year, make recommendations to Air Force technology leaders about whether the CAC reader idea should continue in the long term.
Other Air Force organizations, such as Air Force recruiting, the Key Spouse Program and Air Force Services, are looking for ways they can use Air Force Connect. Those programs will also have some features throughout the app.