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Commentary | Oct. 13, 2023

Direct Access celebrates new milestones

By Kyle Ford, MyCG Writer

Since Oct. 6, many of the legacy pages in Direct Access (DA) were updated to have a similar look and feel, designed to ensure applications are more efficient and intuitive, featuring an icon-based user interface (UI). 

The homepage for DA, the military system for pay, leave, assignments, and evaluations, initially received a UI facelift on March 28.   

Aside from the user interface, little will change for the average user. This is the first of many phases of the modernization effort that will provide an ever-increasing level of functionality and user-experience enhancements.  

The effort to continue to modernize DA is significant and should be thought of similarly to a major application upgrade. The development team created, reviewed and tested every page and then Coast Guard stakeholders and users tested the pages.  

User guides and similar materials will require updates since the display of some pages will materially change. While the intent of modernizing the platform is to continue with current functionality and update existing pages, the required changes could impact business processes or functionality.  

There is currently no plan for the Coast Guard to support using Direct Access via mobile devices. 


The U.S. Department of Defense is committed to making its electronic and information technologies accessible to individuals with disabilities in accordance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d), as amended in 1998. DoD websites use the WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standard.

For persons with disabilities experiencing difficulties accessing content on a particular website, please use the form DoD Section 508 Form.  In this form, please indicate the nature of your accessibility issue/problem and your contact information so we can address your issue or question. If your issue involves log in access, password recovery, or other technical issues, contact the administrator for the website in question, or your local helpdesk.