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Mobcop • tour of duty.

Provides a portal to post, find and volunteer for Active Duty tours. Tour of Duty (TOD) is a system for advertising AD opportunities where RC Soldiers can look for available tours that match their skills and desire to serve. Soldiers can volunteer for consideration for the tours and the hiring commands can screen and recommend interested candidates as part of the TOD process. Soldiers recommended to fill the tours sign automatically generated request packets in DAMPS-A.

Soldiers that would like to volunteer for mobilizations should contact their unit and ask to be added to the G1 MOB Volunteer list.

HRC Contact Number: 1-888-ARMYHRC ( 1-800-276-9472 )

MOBCOP - https://mobcop.aoc.army.pentagon.mil/

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Congress orders Army to open Tour of Duty portal to Reserve, Guard troops

Since late 2017, the Army’s more than 500,000 National Guard and Reserve soldiers haven’t been able to browse short-term Army vacancies except on a government network. Thanks to a new provision in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act , however, the service will now make those listings available on soldiers’ personal devices.

The Army advertises individual vacancies for deployments or short active duty tours on Tour of Duty, an online job board tailored for the service’s part-time soldiers to volunteer for such roles. But the required trip to an armory to get on a government network was a barrier for many troops that don’t have access except while on base.

“The Army will comply with the [legislation],” spokesperson Bruce Anderson told Army Times. “We are considering evaluating the Tour of Duty portal access as part of the Bring Your Own Device pilot program planned for this year.”

The service will have a year to implement the change.

Another new policy added that Guard and Reserve troops can now spend five years out of every six on temporary active duty for operational support orders (ADOS). Previously, such volunteers were limited to three years on ADOS out of every four calendar years.

Leaders of organizations representing Guard and Reserve troops praised the measure.

“Providing ease of access for Citizen Soldiers to find their next opportunity to serve is vital to their growth as soldiers and the readiness of the reserve force,” said the Reserve Organization of America’s Executive Director, retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Phillips, in a press release .

A spokesperson for the National Guard Association of the U.S. was cautiously supportive of the change, noting that ADOS roles were a “bandaid” for issues with permanent full-time manning.

“[This] has the potential to impact a lot of people,” NGAUS spokesperson John Goheen said, describing the provisions as a “win-win” that will give soldiers increased opportunities and create better application pools for critical short-term vacancies.

The bipartisan Tour of Duty legislative provision was spearheaded in Congress by Rep. Chris Jacobs, R-N.Y., and Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

The author of this article is a member of NGAUS .

This article was updated at 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 30, 2021, to clarify that Tour of Duty was accessible from non-government devices until late 2017 .

Davis Winkie covers the Army for Military Times. He studied history at Vanderbilt and UNC-Chapel Hill, and served five years in the Army Guard. His investigations earned the Society of Professional Journalists' 2023 Sunshine Award and consecutive Military Reporters and Editors honors, among others. Davis was also a 2022 Livingston Awards finalist.

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Army opening access to temporary jobs postings for reservists

By Jackson Barnett

January 3, 2022

The Army , propelled by a new requirement from Congress, is putting its temporary jobs board on an open network that members of the National Guard and Army Reserve will be able to access from their personal devices.

The job board for temporary voluntary assignments, called “Tour of Duty,” can currently only be accessed on government devices on the Army’s network, a barrier for most reservists and guardsmen who do not have government devices. The change was mandated by the Fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by the president on Dec. 27.

The Army has a year to transition the job board into an available format for soldiers.

“The Army will comply with the NDAA. We are considering evaluating the Tour of Duty portal access as part of the Bring Your Own Device pilot program planned for this year,” Bruce Anderson, an Army spokesperson, said in a statement.

The Army has been piloting allowing guardsmen and reservists to use their personal devices to access Army networks as a part of the service’s transition to a new email platform from Microsoft. The BYOD policy pilot has so far yielded positive results, Army IT leaders said in December media roundtable.

The portal could impact temporary jobs in the IT world that the Army posts, since attracting and retaining talent has been a perennial problem for cyber units and IT components of the Army.

“One person maybe needs a cyber unit … those are all potential position available,” John Goheen, a spokesperson for the National Guard Association told FedScoop in an interview.

The jobs posted to Tour of Duty are all temporary and voluntary openings and not a part of normal drill cycles. Goheen added that many reservists and guardsmen work many part-time jobs, and the opportunity to self-elect to go on active duty could provide new opportunities for soldiers.

“We are in this period of the great resignation … people may have the opportunity to do a tour,” he said.

Other parts of the military have tried to solve similar challenges, including the Defense Innovation Unit’s “ Gig Eagle, ” which matches reservists with tech skills to technical assignments. The Gig Eagle platform aims to function across the military, not just for the Army and it’s unclear if there is any relation between the Army’s new requirement and the DIU platform.

In a statement to FedScoop, DIU Project Manager for Gig Eagle Scott Summer, explained that Gig Eagle will focus on staffing short-term project needs that range from four hours to several months in duration, initially looking at civilian experience and qualifications.

“The objective of Gig Eagle is to enable real-time, location-agnostic talent identification, allowing DOD hiring managers to engage and match military personnel reservists with DOD missions where their talents will have the most impact,” said Summer.

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Guard and Reserve Members Will Be Able to Access Job Board from Personal Devices

There's not a lot members of Congress can agree on these days, but one issue that brought Democrats and Republicans together was allowing military members in the National Guard and Reserve to find active-duty gigs more easily.

Both sides of the aisle came together to put a provision into the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, allowing those troops to access the Tour of Duty online job board from their smartphones and other personal devices. Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, joined Reps. Chris Jacobs, R-N.Y., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, in pushing for the addition.

The Tour of Duty online job board is a database of active-duty orders and deployments, and usually features some 2,000 job listings. The Army has more than 500,000 Guard and Reserve members who can search the site and apply, but only through the use of a government computer. The provision passed in the 2022 NDAA will soon allow them to access the site using a "personal internet-enabled device."

The NDAA also extends the amount of time these troops can spend on temporary active duty for operational support orders (ADOS) from three out of every four years to five out of every six.

Without the new provision, users who want to search the database would have to make their way to their duty station to use a government device if they didn't have one at home. The new law also says the Army is responsible for the security of the website, which informs users about the Army's staffing shortages.

Tour of Duty is open to all Reserve Component soldiers to browse and volunteer. Any Army command with positions or missions available can post those jobs on the site. Soldiers must find jobs that not only match their skills, but also match their pay grade.

Soldiers can even post their availability and interest for active-duty tours. Commands looking for Reserve Component soldiers to fill vacancies can see soldiers' names, grades and military occupational specialty (MOS) in a pool of volunteers. If a soldier is selected from Tour of Duty, they can choose to accept or decline.

Once accepted, the soldier signs a voluntary request for active duty, but must still be approved by the soldier's chain of command. The application is then sent to be transferred into official orders. The process usually takes 30-60 days.

A pilot program is expected to be released in the coming weeks, outlining procedures for soldiers to bring personal devices into their workspaces.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at [email protected] . He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook .

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