| Comment Number: | EM-008363 |
| Received: | 3/2/2005 4:52:28 PM |
| 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:
March 2, 2005 DoD NSPS Comments , DoD NSPS Comments: Can you say blank check? Would anyone in their right mind write a blank check and give it to a Bureaucratic agency? Yet that is exactly what DOD and Secratary Runsfeld has asked Congress to do for them. DOD wants to play fast and losse with the taxpayers money and screw with the proffesional lives of hundreds of thousands of DOD Employees! How can Congress enact a law when specific and key provisions of it haven't even been written yet??? For example When will we know what appeal mechanism will be in place for appealing a bad performance appraissal? It is simply cruel to tie the pay of an individual to the opinion of a poorly trained supervisor especially when there is no defined appeal procedure! Or how about the list of mandatory offenses that require an unappealable removal? When is Secratary Rumsfeld going to develop those and share them with us? DOD claims that NSPS will uphold Merit Systems principles. How so? When an employee's union rep is no longer protected from reprisal and must show deference to the supervisor, how effective is he going to be for the employee? Whistleblower protection and report Fraud Waste and Abuse? Yea right! Our civil service protections under chapter 5 USC chapter 71 were there for a reason. They served as a system of checks and balances against unbridled Bureaucratic power. They never gave employees the right to milk the sytem as NSPS proponents claim. However I have seen them used very effectively to promote the efficiency of Government and to protect the individual worker from an unscroupulous supervisor. I have witnessed on several occasions some bad supervisors who, simply on the basis of them not liking someone-tried to destroy that person's carreer and reputation. The only thing that stopped them is the awareness raised by the grievance proceses that allowed an outside third party to review the case and overturn the bad decions of the supervisor. In those cases the managment chain protected its own! What makes anyone think NSPS will somehow change this? NSPS fails because it lacks the checks and balances of chapter 71. Please Congress add them back in and give federal employees a fighting chance. Dammit I'm a loyal patriotic American, I have a family member and friends serving in IRAQ. I'm also a service member myself and am completely willing to lay my life on the line for our country. I'm sick and tired of the stereo types that go around about the lazy government employee. I'm sick of hearing and now witnessing within DOD the" transformation" to the corporate model and how it is the means to salvation for a fat government!. It makes me sick to think that some washington Bureaucrats are trying to make a system within DOD that is completely subject to their whims as if it were their own private corporation! Is this Mr Rumsfeld's plan, to strip DoD employees of their civil service protections and somehow we will be better of and more efficient as a result? By the way Pay for performance ( as per NSPS) is for the service department of a slimy auto dealership. It is poorly suited for the fedreal government. Federal employees don't get stock options or golden parachutes. Most don't get rich off of serving the public, except for a very few at the top--who should be paid for performance? If they really wan't to make DOD better, Mr Rumsfed and the leaders in DOD need to examin their own commitment to public service and ignore the corporate lobbyists trying to profit off of the taxpayers money! If you really desire an efficient government leave the employees alone and give them back their civil service protections as provided in chapter 71. Sincerely,