Reserve Sailors Proposed Force Improvement Awarded "Ready to Win" Idea Of The Year

[Tony]

NORFOLK, Va. (NNS) -- Commander, Navy Reserve Force is pleased to announce the 2019 Idea of the Year award to recognize Reserve Sailor’s Force improvement recommendations submitted through the Navy Reserve’s Ready to Win (R2W) Idea Portal.

The inaugural award for 2019 goes to retired Capt. Matthew Berta and Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Kyle Bormuth for their funeral honors management application ideas. R2W allows Reserve Sailors to submit innovative ideas, policy recommendations and proposals to improve all areas of Navy Reserve business.

Berta, an Ossining, New York native, and prior commanding officer of Navy Operational Support Center Moreno Valley, submitted the idea through R2W’s Idea Portal, and won the vote amongst multiple entries to become the site’s first submission to gain implementation.

Bormuth, assigned to NOSC Toledo, contributed to the idea by submitting additional add-on application features, streamlining the planning of funeral honor events, particularly for Navy Reserve units.

Annually, Full-Time Support and Reserve Sailors provide military honors for approximately 70 percent of all veteran funerals. The service is a logistical challenge for NOSC staffs as they work to coordinate scheduling timelines and finding Reserve personnel to support.

“It’s an idea I had been kicking around in my head for years, ever since I was a NOSC commanding officer,” said Berta. “We had to do to several hundred funerals a year, all with spreadsheets and cell phones. Reservists must be contacted somehow to reach out and go to this or that funeral. That's where the app comes in.”

Since Berta’s submission to R2W’s Idea Portal, Commander, Navy Reserve Forces Command (CNRFC) has developed the Reserve Relationship Management (R2M) application. R2M serves as a general process improvement application, now to include “Funeral Honors” planning. CNRFC is currently beta testing the program with several commands.

"It’s in ‘pilot mode’ right now and we’ve already released it to NOSCs Richmond and Schenectady. By the end of this fiscal year, we plan to release it to 12 NOSCs and three squadrons total,” said Lt. Cmdr. Chen Chang, the CNRFC’s R2M program leader. “In a single, Navy-approved application we will be able to track all of the different coordination events. The app will include a live chatter feed and text messaging feature so that if there is an emerging change at the last minute, you'll get a text message, or you can get a notification on your phone.”

The development of the application R2M and the implementation of Berta and Bormuth’s Idea Portal submission aligns with the Navy Reserve’s goal to streamline administrative processes.

R2W itself is designed around the Navy Reserve's guiding principles of warfighting, innovation and teamwork, and was put in place to help preserve strategic depth and deliver relevant operational capability to rapidly increase the agility and lethality of the Navy's total force.