| Comment Number: | OL-10502660 |
| Received: | 3/2/2005 3:02:22 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:
Todays Civil Service system has in place rules and regulations necessary to deal with sub par performing civil servants. The problem managers have in dealing with this minority is going to reoccur in what ever system is implemented. Poor performance requires documentation to correct, this requires time and effort outside of the technical realm of most of todays managers. Senior leadership at most commands consist of military and one or two senior civilians. The typical military tour for officers is 18 to 24 months, and is not nearly long enough to gain an understanding of the basic HR requirements of civilian personnel. They will have little or no knowledge of the motivators, morale issues or other issues and thus will tend to be lenient on the grading of civil servants. After fifteen to twenty years of military these officers are not going to learn how to set goals for their departments or commands and then relate these broad goals to specific goals for each non military person at their comman. They can expect very little help from the senior civilians at their commands as these personnel have been technical experts in their fields and moved up rather than being HR personnel. They know how to address system and program issues, not how to counsel and guide their subordinates. A one or two week school will not give them the skills necessary to make valid determinations of who is performing at what level. They will be forced to rely on intuition, do you see the buddy system creeping back in? The current system is more than adequate providing both management tools to correct poor performance and employee protections. Management should use the tools taht they have available. Pay should remain as is as it promotes team work and protects employee pay. DOD has said that moving to NSPS will save money. My question is how. The majority of civil sevants are at a minimum performing at a level above what they are currnetly being paid as they do more as they gain knowledge. With NSPS DOD will and should pay thes employees more. As for those employees who are performing at a subpar level, they need to be replaced. If you do that under NSPS, you have no savings in the long run as the new employees, if they stay, will be able to rapidly increase their pay by performing and thus wind up costing the DOD more. There are many ways to address poor personnel management practices which are widespread in the government, but simply instituting another program will not solve them. We need to train personnel supervisors to supervise personnel not programs, we need to hold employees accountable and not transfer them elsewhere and we need to value our employees. NSPS does not provide sufficient tools to acheive these goals any better or worse than does the current system thus what is gained?