| Comment Number: | OL-10503464 |
| Received: | 3/5/2005 5:43:34 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:
As a military supervisor of civil service employees, I have reviewed the new National Security Personnel System (NSPS) and find it very complex. Though at times somewhat cumbersome and less flexible, the current General Schedule is objective and works. NSPS will require considerable training for supervisors and more manpower, money and time to implement and administer. Who has more of that? NSPS appears highly subjective, and opens wide a door for employees to charge supervisors with favortism, etc. Like many new systems such as the Installation Management Agency (IMA), second and third echelon effects and costs have not been fully considered, resulting in initial dis-satisfaction by customers and loss of credibility in the process. Employees express doubt that sufficient funds will be allocated to adequately convert to the new system; and even when implemented, they believe so many ceilings will be forced on supervisors that fewer opportunities will be available for promotions, pay raises or performance cash awards. They do not trust NSPS, primarily because of the high degree of subjectivity that accompanies it. If supervisors are adequately trained, free of biases and establish clear measurable standards of performance, perhaps NSPS could offer the flexibility desired by DoD/OPM and insure protection for employees. Given human nature as it is, NSPS will more than likely only add to the bureaucratic safeguards required by the problematic areas of the present system; i.e., EEO, EEEO, unions, etc. Change presents challenges and comes to any organization that attempts to be dynamic and relative to the people it intends to serve. How that change is implemented (the process) is often more important and determines how it is accepted more than the product itself. I trust that implementation will proceed only as fast as training, funding and operations will allow and enable. After all, the purpose for this change (NSPS) is not only to serve government institutions, but also the employees on whom those institutions depend and exist to serve, hopefully.