| Comment Number: | OL-10508997 |
| Received: | 3/15/2005 11:57:18 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 believe the NSPS has not been critically thought through. The thing that bothers me the most is that it is going into effect BEFORE all the problems are ironed out. The top level echelon has their own positions and future worked out, but the lower levels will just have to take the changes from day to day as management tells them to, even if things have to be changed again later. I believe that the new system of NSPS will hurt the mission of DoD. This system will change the way workers are paid, evaluated, promoted, fired, scheduled, and treated. These rules would create a system in which federal managers are influenced by favoritism rather than serving the civil concerns of the American people. The proposed system will, in fact, be detrimental to employees that have a less than ideal relationships with their supervisors. The employee may be a hard worker and do everything expected but the personal issue would weigh in heavily when determining raises, etc. The amount of a worker's salary will depend almost completely on the personal judgment of his or her manager. The government system in place now has protected employees' rights from favoritism and the new system will rescind those rights. It will destroy cooperation and espirit de corp, and be an enormous distraction. Rather than leading people to approach their work in the manner of accomplishing it safely, efficiently, and timely, they will approach it in the manner most suitable to turning it to their own personal advantage. Such a system may be okay in a for-profit enterprise where the predominant interest is the bottom line, but it is not suitable in the life-or-death business of national defense. The Civil Service system has protected all of us equally and established a system to deal with the low performers. Today, management can remove people for incompetence but only after giving a last chance for improvement. Under NSPS its the bosses view against yours which refers back to “we'll all be friends and think alike or "I" will have you removed”, this has nothing to do with performance but politics and how to get rewarded. The problem of scheduling and deploying will be detrimental to the mission because of the hardships placed on workers that need to plan the structure of their lives. Some of the best and brightest will not apply to work for the government in these circumstances.