CAMP COINER, South Korea — Soldiers in South Korea will receive better personnel and postal support when the 8th Personnel Command inactivates and merges next month with the 8th U.S. Army’s G-1 staff, which develops, plans and executes manpower, personnel plans, programs and polices, its commander said last week.

Col. Michael J. Harris, 8th PERSCOM commander, wants soldiers to think of the merger as a “transformation,” not inactivation.

Under the plan, Headquarters Headquarters Company will mesh with the G-1, losing nearly 50 of its 150 soldiers, and the 509th and 516th Personnel Support Battalions will fall under the 19th Theater Support Command with no change in staffing.

If anything, Harris said, customers will see better service because the commands are putting technology to work.

“The bridge” to these improvements, Harris said, “is our Web site.”

At the 8th PERSCOM Web site, soldiers can find “one-stop shopping” for anything from promotion lists to personnel news to postal customs forms.

Harris seemed especially excited about a new function on the site called “Turbo PCS.” Soldiers leaving South Korea can request reassignment orders electronically in about 30 minutes through “four simple steps,” he said. A once cumbersome process now puts orders in a soldier’s hands in about 72 hours. For now, only officers’ orders are e-mailed back after creation; senior noncommissioned officers will be next, followed by enlisted.

Beginning June 1, Harris will staff a call center for roughly 15 hours a day, meaning troops in South Korea — or those inbound from elsewhere — can call and talk to a duty expert without having to visit an office. Based on usage and feedback, the service could be expanded to 24-hours- a-day, he said.

Harris also said the link to “Assignment in Place” — the program under which soldiers can receive bonuses for extending their tour in Korea — on the Web site has been successful and he hopes more soldiers use it.

“We had 11,000 people sign up for AIP,” he said, meaning 11,000 pieces of paper had to be placed in 11,000 files. The “efficiency that’s gained,” from electronic business is staggering, he said.

In using this sort of automated service, “there are some savings that can be gained,” he said, and we can “use those gains to provide better service.”

Also beginning June 1, all soldiers will be given compact discs containing administrative forms, video briefings and links to the 8th PERSCOM Web site and other helpful Army sites, Harris said.

Harris said most of this wouldn’t be possible without the Soldiers Management System, a massive database that tracks the soldiers in South Korea. Harris said a contracted company and a local information management office created the database about a few years ago.

The command’s use of the Web site and its automated systems are gaining interest Armywide, he said, but without a database like the Soldiers Management System, the programs won’t work.

Of the inactivation — or transformation — Harris said “leaders took that on as a challenge.”

“And the best is really yet to come,” he said.