Comment Number: OL-10501382
Received: 2/24/2005 10:57:55 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:

1. The very short comment period, in and of itself, signifies a serious problem with the intentions of the creators of the proposed NSPS regulations. The NSPS creators have claimed this will be the biggest change in 50 years, affecting 700,000 workers in a critical agency of government, yet only 30 days are given to comment. I will be on travel for a significant portion of these 30 days, as will many other DoD civil servants. 2. There is no nexus between the proposed NSPS system and "national security". The overall tone of the Federal Register document is that DoD is full of poor performing civil servants, and that more methods of punishment are necessary. Note: According to a study by OPM in 1999, their best objective estimate of poor performers in Government was 3.7%. 3. The Federal Register indicates that a lot of hiring, firing, and salary fluctuation will occur under NSPS, which will create a "revolving door" civil service system that is susceptible to politicization. Furthermore, NSPS presumes that the rank-and-file civil servants and their unions are the root cause of these undocumented performance problems, and that supervisory/management personnel are without fault. 4. The public cannot provide meaningful comments to the NSPS proposal because it is too vague. The NSPS Federal register proposal is full of ideology and devoid of crucial details. The Federal Register proposal appears incomplete, as if it were either rushed by its developers to meet some deadline, or as if its developers have a hidden agenda and purposely are holding back details. These are not proposed regulations but rather philosophies. 5. The mention in the Federal Register that the attacks of September 11th make NSPS necessary is a shameful exploitation of an unrelated tragedy. The NSPS creators are using this tragedy to push through fringe political ideologies that have been kept alive by the detractors of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. George Nesterczuk, the political appointee implanted into OPM to be lead advisor on the NSPS and DHS personnel systems, published a paper entitled "Taking Charge of Federal Personnel" nine months prior to September 11th, on January 10, 2001. The paper is posted on the Heritage Foundation website. Not only does the Nesterczuk paper provide insight into the ideology behind the proposed NSPS and DHS personnel systems, but the paper makes absolutely no mention of "national security". Only after September 11th, has “national security” become a battle cry to dismantle the Civil Service Reform Act. The creators of NSPS need to be reminded that if skilled experienced federal air traffic controllers were not on the job on the morning of September 11th, perhaps the tragedies of that day would have been much worse. I do not recall any problems with federal employee performance on September 11th, as they tracked and safely redirected thousands of flights to other airports in a matter of hours. 6. The developers of NSPS do not seem to understand the culture within the civil service. The reality is that most civil servants are career-oriented professionals who perform their jobs well. Also, civil servants are a non-political segment of the workforce, and are the only segment of the workforce that places the public interest over partisan politics, profit, and other self-serving interests. The career civil service is the only stable component of the overall DoD workforce and ensures preservation of critical institutional knowledge necessary to carry out the mission of DoD through turmoil and political changes. NSPS will turn the tables within the civil service, creating chaos, instability, an inexperienced workforce, and a system where self-serving interests and cronyism are placed over the long term interests of the public. NSPS is certainly not in the best interests of national security.