More than 100 Marine promotions have been temporarily delayed after a system update caused an error that miscalculated the points needed for troops to make the next rank.
The Marine Corps ordered units not to promote anyone to corporal or sergeant during the month of May, at least until the scope of the issue could be determined, according to a service message sent force-wide recently.
On Friday, the service said that most promotions are back on track after the original system issue was resolved. But certain promotions are still affected, including so-called remedial promotions that involve racking up points through continuing education, for example.
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Capt. Sarah Eason, a spokesperson for the service's Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told Military.com that 113 Marines still cannot be promoted to corporal or sergeant until the service assesses their actual scores.
Other than those 113 cases, promotions to corporal and sergeant were again authorized as of Friday, and points in the system are accurate, she said.
The system update occurred April 23 and caused education points, known as continuing education units, or CEUs, to be miscalculated. The error affected the Junior Enlisted Performance Evaluation System, or JEPES.
"When the system update was made, a programming logic error falsely maxed out certain Marines' education points, regardless of completion status," Eason said Friday. "We are looking into additional quality-assurance measures to prevent this mistake from occurring in the future."
The message to the force was originally posted on the social media page notinregz. The post included another message that was sent to force-level sergeants major, chiefs of staff and administrative personnel saying that the error was isolated to CEU points only.
The Marine Corps confirmed the validity of the messages to Military.com on Friday.
Marines receive points that contribute to their promotion odds, Eason explained. Continuing education is critical to junior Marines' efforts to get to the next rank sooner, and by merit.
"Marines receive points in the mental agility and informal professional military education categories of JEPES for completing MarineNet courses," Eason said. "The more MarineNet courses completed, the more JEPES points a Marine receives. The higher the JEPES score, the higher the likelihood for promotion."
MarineNet is the Corps' distance learning network.
Eason said that the system error that caused the issue was corrected May 1.
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