Comment Number: OL-10503341
Received: 3/5/2005 12:14:32 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:

Comments concerning: Federal Register: February 14, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 29) Proposed Rules: FR Document 05-2582/NSPS (National Security Personnel System) pages 7552 - 7603. I am very alarmed by the proposal to broaden job descriptions. The reason there are distinctions between closely related levels of work is detailed below. I am a Physical Scientist with a master's degree in Marine Geology. I have worked in my field to increase my expertise and understanding of the field for over twenty (20) years. My specialty is making charts of the ocean floor, or in other words, bathymetry. I am not a hydrographer, nor a geophysicist, nor an oceanographer, all of which are closely allied fields. But, within these proposed regulations, I can be detailed to duties where I have little or no expertise. Later, I can be terminated because I could not do the job assigned outside my field. The provisions of NSPS concerning pay will limit employees' high-end pay, even for higher than excellent performance. In private industry as SECDEF claims to want to model, an employee is given as much responsibility as possible and is rewarded for performance. In DoD, there are technical high-grade GS employees, that is, non-managerial or non-supervisory higher graded employees. They are there to provide management with technical expertise that would not otherwise be available. Under the proposed pay-banding system of NSPS, these positions could not exist. How does DoD propose to reward these employees at their high grade? Fire them? Demote them? These and other similar questions must be answered before NSPS is allowed to become law. The costs incurred by NSPS will be a duplication of efforts extant. Extra training for management (supervisors and HR personnel) and employee to understand and use NSPS will be much more that DoD suggests. This will result in a lack of training for all, resulting in distrust of the system, and ending in the failure of NSPS itself. Of course, there will be a call for contracting out DoD/governmental functions because NSPS did not work and, of course, the private sector can do it better. Additionally, any modification of existing HR/payroll systems will be done by contractors under very poorly written contracts (remember any number of these like the FERS upgrade or the still on-going FAA computer modernization) at a cost much greater than DoD claims to need. Naturally, we must believe the administration on their cost estimate of NSPS. This is the same administration that gave Congress such good estimates on Medicare prescription costs. If destroying over one hundred years of Congressional laws, regulations, and statutes, executive branch decisions, and court (Federal District, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court) decisions do not change the distribution of power, then there is no conflict with E.O. 13132. Additionally, if the power acquired by SECDEF under these provisions from the use of the phrase, "sole, exclusive, and unreviewable discretion" does not change the distribution of power, then there is no problem. In closing these comments on NSPS, I leave the readers with these thoughts. Honor, integrity, high standards, honesty, and respect are not the impressions I get from reading these proposed NSPS regulations. SECDEF's conduct of hiding behind the too often used catchphrase of national security and hiding the truth of NSPS is shameful and dishonors employees. And speaking of my co-workers, I find feelings of fear - fear, not of change, but of retribution against perceived offenses permitted by this document. If this is the legacy you wish to leave to the brave, honest, hard-working men and women of DoD, then shame on you. Otherwise, stop NSPS. Otherwise, repeal NSPS. Part 3