Comment Number: OL-10500436
Received: 2/17/2005 9:21:23 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:

I have worked for 22 years for DoD and understand that the current personnel system certainly has it's problems. However, the NSPS system looks like it will cause more problems than it fixes. When management determines the amount of employee raises each year, it will have a very chilling effect on honest feedback up the chain. How many will risk upsetting management, or go so far as reporting unethical activity if it means impacting the money they have to support their family? Streamlined procedures to deal with unacceptable performance give management a swift vehicle to retaliate against whistleblowers. Possibly being vindicated years later is not much comfort when you have a family to support. It will also have a detrimental effect on teamwork which we rely so heavily on in Transformation. Managers are part of the team. They will have to spend so much time being careful not to give the appearance of any kind of favoritism, and document constantly to protect their personnel decisions, that they cannot function effectively with the team. I understand wanting to make govenment fuction more closely like private industry, but the goals of the two are very different. Private industry's goals is to make a profit. Government's goal is to provide necessary sevices for the citizens of this country. An integral part of those services is integrity, which is dependent on the employees feeling free to question how business is conducted in their organization. This new system will force this key element to be a thing of the past, and we will all end up paying that bill.