Comment Number: 05-02582-EREG-226-d7391-c32372
Received: 3/15/2005 8:00:00 AM
Subject: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
Title: National Security Personnel System
CFR Citation: 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901
No Attachments

Comments:

Docket Number: NSPS-2005-001

Pay and Pay Administration--Subpart C, page 7560, Other Performance Payouts: Extraordinary Pay Increase, right column, last sentence.

Section Recommending Change:
"The performance must be expected to continue at an extraordinarily high level in the future."

Recommended Change. Delete the sentence.

Rationale.
The feature of an Extraordinary Pay Increase is a Best Practice in several Science & Technology Reinvention Laboratory Personnel Demonstrations. The premise of this intervention is that managers can recognize extraordinary performance which occurred in the current rating period. The reward (a base pay increase) is similar to the notion of a Quality Step Increase in the General Schedule System for Superior Performance. However, an extraordinary pay increase may be significantly more that a step increase (maybe by as much as 6 times). In either application there is no overt or covert requirement that any reward for current performance be contingent on any crystal ball look at the future with respect to continued extraordinary performance.

The principal concern with retaining this sentence is that it may lead to a Component interpretation that the base pay increase should be recertified each year (i.e., the notion of an expected and continued extraordinarily high level of performance in the future). Recertification in subsequent years does not occur with Quality Step Increases not is this a practice in any implementation of the Extraordinary Pay Increase process in S&T Reinvention Laboratory personnel demonstrations.