DAF develops reasonable, religious accommodation requests appeals portal

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) -- To streamline the civilian reasonable accommodation, military religious accommodation, and all accommodation appeals processes, the Department of the Air Force has created the DAF Accommodation Portal.

Airmen, Guardians and civilians, as appropriate, will be able to apply for any of these options when the DAF-AP becomes active on May 15. The portal will centralize and facilitate processes, simplifying the tracking and review of accommodations requests and appeals.

The DAF-AP has been in development since September 2022, when Jan Baltrusaitis, chief of the DAF COVID-19 Task Force, identified the need for a “one-stop shop” for Airmen and Guardians to navigate their requests more easily.

“A number of accommodation processes were fragmented and difficult for servicemembers and approving officials to navigate without a standardized and transparent system of record,” Baltrusaitis said. “The service has seen an exponential increase in religious accommodation requests, and the portal offers a systemic automated solution to ensure our servicemembers and civilians are assisted in the most expeditious manner going forward."

With no additional cost to the service, the DAF COVID-19 Task Force created a consolidated portal for all accommodation requests using existing data platforms, available resources, and talent. Once active, the automated system will manage the current manual flow of requests between the applicants and their respective processing organizations. Additionally, it will digitally notify members at each step, including the appeals process and final decision, ensuring transparency of the entire process.