| Comment Number: | OL-10502787 |
| Received: | 3/2/2005 8:49:06 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:
I have the follwoing general suggestions: 1. One of the biggest issue impacting the morale of the civilian workforce is the abolishment of the "double dipping" rule. This may aid retention and recruitment into the uniformed services, but the impact of this rule has been the reduction of advancement opportunities for civilian employees. It is very discouraging to me personally to see that 7% of the senior civilian workforce (GS12 team leaders and above) are previous military; roughly 600 of them came from the enlisted ranks. 2. You can improve the personnel system by taking steps to encourage professionalism (i.e. putting education first and experience second). The Senior Army Worforce (source: SAW briefings) includes roughly 750 GS14's and 250 GS15's who have an associate's degree or less. That's an incredible amount of leaders in the Army with less than 2 years of college. Recruiting people with the appropriate credentials should be a priority. Non degreed applicants should be hired only in extremely exceptional cases. It would be interesting to see whether some of these have gained these positions based on their military experience vice their educational background. 3. We can make great strides in updating our personnel system and recruiting the best candidates by improving the implementation of the family leave act to focus on child rearing rather than strictly child bearing. This is the European model whereby families are given the options to take a year off with 80% pay to raise their children.