Army Environmental Reporting improves readiness by helping provide and ensure continued access to quality training lands and facilities with minimal restrictions on operations. A reporting system is needed that provides an Army-wide solution for accurate, reliable, and timely environmental information. The software must comply with environmental liability reporting requirements, monitoring and reporting on the performance of the Army Environmental Program (AEP), and conducting program analysis to optimize environmental cleanup and environmental quality activities.

In 2015 the Army began the transition to the Headquarters Army Environmental System, known as HQAES. This system is focused on environmental program and project manage and is the authoritative system of record to prepare the Defense Environmental Programs Annual Report to Congress.

HQAES has three major components. The Environmental Cleanup Program component consist of the overall program management and initiatives generated to address contamination at any Army installation, worldwide. The Environmental Quality components manages all environmental quality programs and is meant to improve environmental compliance, conservation, pollution prevention and associated initiatives. The Environmental Performance Assessment component records the assessments, reports and analyses the performance of environmental compliance programs and assesses the effectiveness of the entire environmental management system.

The Army has chosen an enterprise resource planning (ERP) commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software package from SAP (System, Application and Products) as the enterprise solution for Army environmental data management collection and reporting.

The Headquarters Army Environmental System (HQAES) has been customized to fit Army environmental business processes and provide Army auditable environmental data to support compliance with the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act and Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA).

The Army will transition all legacy systems to the HQAES and look for opportunities to link other Army systems to share data and provide more complete, accurate and timely reporting.

The Army will also ensure the HQAES can share data with Army Mapper, Headquarters Installation Information System (HQIIS), Knowledge Based Corporate Reporting System (KBCRS), General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS), Installation Status Report (ISR), Single Army Logistics Enterprise System (SALE), Army Knowledge Online (AKO), and Status Tool for the Environmental Program (STEP).

The Army has begun the transition of data from the following legacy systems:

- Army Environmental Database (AEDB): This is the system previously used to collect Army environmental data and served as the database of record for compliance cleanup, environmental restoration and environmental quality.

- Environmental Restoration Information System (ERIS): The system previously used to record Army restoration and field data including geological, chemical and geographical.

- Reimbursable Program Tracking System (RPTS): The system previously used for tracking reimbursable transactions, e.g., forestry program revenues and required payouts.

- Environmental Performance Assessment System (EPAS) software. This software was previously used to collect records of EPAS audits and the associated corrective actions.

- Repository of Environmental Documents (READ): The previous database of record for documents related to environmental cleanup and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses.
 

The HQAES provides centralized management of the reporting process which allows the Army to:

- Comply with environmental liabilities recognition, validation and reporting requirements

- Meet DoD information technology certification standards

- Conduct program analysis and evaluation for optimizing programming, planning and budgeting

- Prevent time-consuming verification and costly re-work of data entered in multiple systems

- Eliminate redundant/obsolete data collection and meet new data requirements

- Monitor program performance to meet Army Environmental Program priorities

- Use information to prepare Defense Environmental Program Annual Report to Congress and semi-annual DoD Environmental Program Management Reviews

- Provide a tool so commands and installations can improve their program execution management

- Reduce data calls and improve delivery of information to meet customer needs
 

Governing documents/laws/regulations:

Army Regulation (AR) 200-1

DOD Manual 4715.20

32 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 651

Department of Defense (DOD) Instruction (DODI) 4715.08

DODI 4715.07

DEPARC

Financial Improvement Audit Readiness (FIAR)