Comment Number: OL-10506027
Received: 3/11/2005 10:32:06 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:

I am writing to comment on the proposed changes to the Department of Defense personnel system, known as a NSPS. The proposals do contain some positive and needed changes, particularly as regards improved and streamlined hiring practices. However, other aspects of the proposals are highly problematic and troubling. It appears that national security is being used as a smokescreen to justify changes that really have nothing to do with national security or defence but do have to do with increasing the power and perogatives of management. The new system would drastically alter the present balance between management and employee rights and, if implemented, will result in the destruction of the civil service system as we know it. Perhaps that is the true goal. On the first matter, among the justifications which are being given for the new system is that “the goal is to provide DOD with a modern, flexible and agile human resources system that can be more responsive to the national security environment”. The problem with this is that there are many employees affected whose jobs have absolutely nothing to do with national security or defense, the 1000 or so Army Corps of Engineers personnel who perform regulatory work under the Clean Water Act for instance, or many others within that agency whose work centers on the environmental design of civil works or ecosystem restoration. Why these people need to have their present civil service protections robbed from them in the name of “meeting the threats of the 21st Century” is probably an unanswerable question and is a gross and irresponsible misuse of that very serious national concern. On the second matter, the proposed changes would allow unethical supervisors and managers throughout the chain of command to exercise preferential treatment of cronies and sycophants in a way that has not been seen in the federal civil service system in a very long time. Because of this it will create a level of distrust and resentment of both supervisors and peers that will inevitably drag down morale and create turnover. Even the best supervisors will be under a tremendous burden in making performance evaluations and in the distribution of monetary incentives, trying to be fair in a system with minimal guidelines and ambiguous policies. That is likely to be a thankless and impossible job. Further, and most alarmingly of all, the rights of employees to oppose disciplinary or dismissal actions will be extremely curtailed, as will the rights of parties outside the chain of command who review such decisions to reverse or order mitigation. Management is thereby given the ability to carry out adverse actions, up to and including dismissal, with far fewer avenues available to the affected employee, or those who aid them, to show the presence of injustice or personal animosity in such actions than presently exists. DoD is attempting to create a system which destroys the time-tested balance of management and employee rights and replace it with a system that, as long as efficiency in the name of national security is invoked as a cover, will allow the whims of management to be carried out without serious challenge regardless of the true motivation for decisions.