| Comment Number: | OL-10506855 |
| Received: | 3/13/2005 5:06:25 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:
9901.103 Definition of Performance: The basic premise of the NSP system is that an employee’s pay, promotion opportunities, and retention (i.e. security of employment) are based on rewarding good performance. Yet, the definition of “Performance” provided here includes such intangibles as “professional demeanor” and “attitude.” How can these factors be objectively quantified in order to determine a fair level of compensation? This places entirely too much discretion in the hands of management. “Attitude,” for example, could be interpreted as demonstrating appropriate support for a particular political affiliation favored by management. As another example, “Professional demeanor” could be interpreted as a willingness to work uncompensated time on non-essential activities such as preparing, conducting, and attending supposedly “voluntary” office social functions. In order for this system to be truly fair, it would be necessary to develop an extensive and complex system of performance standards, tailored to each employee in order to accurately measure performance. It is doubtful that such a complex, unwieldy, and bureaucratic system would provide any advantage either to the government or the employee. Furthermore, for this NSP system to meet its promise, supervisors would need extensive training. Typically, government civilian supervisors receive all of a week’s worth of training, often months or even years after they are first appointed to supervisory positions. This proposed regulation does nothing to address this long-standing deficiency in training of civilian supervisors. Performance Standards should be specified, and they should not include factors subject to malicious manipulation like “professional demeanor” and “attitude.” Supervisory training objectives need to be defined and necessary coursework must be adequately supported by budgets and time allotments. 9901.201 Level of Pay: Regarding pay, how will “…appropriate consideration of both national and local rates paid by employers in the private sector…” be accomplished? An objective standard of conducting periodic surveys needs to be specified. 9901.511(b)(1) Non-competitive Appointments: This new personnel system has been advertised as a system that rewards merit and permits flexibility in hiring. If this is true, why then are DoD and OPM being given carte blanche to make non-competitive appointments? Note that this paragraph is independent of, and does not refer to the subsequent paragraphs. The existing civil service system was designed to prevent favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism. This paragraph appears to enable all of these abuses. 9901.514 Non-citizen Hiring: Although historically, non-citizens have been allowed to enlist in the armed forces under restricted circumstances in order to fill certain low-skill positions, the role of DoD civilians is completely different. DoD employees are often the “corporate memory” for their organizations, and are expected to properly handle non-classified but sensitive information, the disclosure of which could cause injury to the national interest. It is inappropriate to place this trust in persons whose loyalty may be to another government. Furthermore, it is insulting to assume that only a non-citizen could fill a position of special trust within the defense establishment. Is the real intent of this paragraph to enable DoD to out-source functions to impoverished nations where rates of labor compensation and standards of workers’ rights are considerable lower than in the U.S.? While this practice may have resulted in short-term cost savings in industry, it poses a unreasonable risk to national security.