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Senior Airman keeps AFRS servers purring

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Hillary Stonemetz
  • Air Force Recruiting Service
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas --  Senior Airman Jeremy Vaughn, Air Force Recruiting Service software developer, was named Airman of the Quarter for Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph and given a key to the city and a Texas state flag in a ceremony here Dec. 4.

Vaughn is responsible for developing software and maintaining the Air Force Recruiting Information Support System servers. AFRISS is used on a daily basis by thousands of people, including active duty enlisted and prior service recruiters, Officer Training School and Air National Guard recruiters, headquarters personnel, Basic Military Training and the Air Force Personnel Center, among others. When AFRISS suddenly crashed, time was of the essence to get it back up and running.

"We had a water leak in the server room that damaged eight servers," Vaughn said. "We tried to prevent as much interruption of service as possible. I coordinated a team of five or six contractors to back up the data and redirected everyone to different servers."

Without AFRISS, the Air Force recruiting mission comes to a screeching halt.

"It's a huge data collection system," Vaughn said. "Recruiters put all the applicants' data into the system and based on their data, we generate all their forms they have to sign to join the Air Force. Forms are auto filled based on the information the applicant gives us."
Due to Vaughn's diligence, knowledge and hard work, a negative impact to recruiting was largely avoided.

"We got AFRISS back online within one day and we were able to restore everything to 100 percent in a month or two."

However, soon another glitch caused personnel at Military Entrance Processing Stations nationwide to scratch their heads and turn to Vaughn for help.

"When people submit their security clearance, they have to digitally sign four pages," Vaughn said. "But after they signed and the page refreshed, the signature block on the first page said, 'My Mom the Chief.' It was a problem with about 90 percent of submissions from MEPS. They had to do manual submissions which cost more time. We figured out it was a problem with our server, so we fixed it and now 100 percent of submissions are accepted instead of 90 percent failure."

Around Headquarters AFRS, Vaughn is also known as being the "go-to-guy" for all software development needs. He received a request from Chief Master Sgt. John Bryant, the AFRS operations superintendent.

"Chief Bryant wanted a report to show all Battlefield Airmen currently in the Delayed Entrance Program with their contact information," Vaughn said. "He wanted to have Battlefield Airmen in the field mentor them and tell them what it takes to succeed. Chief can now press a button and get all the data. It really isn't a big deal."

But others think it is a big deal.

"Over 2,000 personnel rely upon Senior Airman Vaughn on a daily basis; 1,100 of those are production recruiters. That alone is an awesome responsibility for any Airman, no matter the rank," said Master Sgt. Jason Hill, AFRS first sergeant. "It's an accomplishment that Senior Airman Vaughn should be extremely proud of because we are all proud of him."