Case Study: U.S. Department of Defense modernizes military enlistment processing with Tandem

U.S. Department of Defense cuts enlistment onboarding from months to days with Tandem

The U.S. Department of Defense faced a critical challenge with its 25-year-old military enlistment system, MIRS. The legacy software, used across all six branches of the armed services, was plagued by frequent crashes, overnight data sync delays, and required a 200-page training manual. Partnering with Tandem, the department sought a complete modernization of the platform to improve reliability and efficiency for its 65 processing stations.

Tandem redesigned and rebuilt the entire system over a three-year engagement, employing user research and agile development. The solution, MIRS 1.1, featured a modern React and Ruby on Rails architecture with a GraphQL API, replacing outdated text-file integrations. The results were transformative: employee onboarding time was cut from months to days, millions of applicants are now processed annually, and field advisors strongly prefer the new system. The project by Tandem also won a Gold Stevie Award for its success.

U.S. Department of Defense