| Comment Number: | OL-10509617 |
| Received: | 3/15/2005 4:40:00 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:
The Case for Action. While I can agree with the Secretary that the DoD civilian employees are unique, I differ with him on the actions he plans to take. DoD employees have continuely put the safety of the Nation and our military first. Killing their morale with god like powers will not help the situation at all, in fact, it will have the reverse effect. Unlike the bad advice he has been given, the federal employee has kept pace with the changing world. Unfortunately, upper management has not. Management has always has the authority, and guidelines, to remove any non-performing employees. But instead of doing what has been outlined for them, in 5 USC, 5 CFR, and a host of other laws, rules, and regulations, they sit back and be moan that it is virturally impossible to fire a federal employee. All the management official has to do is prove that the employee was not performing, even after being the fair opportunity to improve. Of course this does requires documentation, which most manager refuse to do. The same aplies to rating employees and rewarding those who perform above the call of duty. Several reports, both in the private and public sectors, have shown that many supervisors would rather just give some of their worse performers a "successful" rating in leiu of justifying why the employee received an "unsuccessful" rating. And this alledged call for action will not change a lazy, incompetent, and poorly trained manager. Had the Secretary set out to make sure that only well qualified, people oriented, communication capable, non-good old boys employees, are made supervisors, all the calls for action in the world will not change the way the DoD does business. Then too, all supervisors should be mandated to attend training classes on communication skills, problem solving, how to deal with both good and problem employees, race and gender relations, diversity, customer relations, proper employee evaluation, and labor management relations, on at least annual basis, within the next several years, DoD will learn that all of this hype was just a waste of time and money. Except for the fact that the Secretary of Defense will have more power than any other human being on the planet in any free world. Further, instead of spending money on this new system, why not just identify and repair what may be broken in the present system. I truly believe that it will be much less costly and more widely accepted. The register says that management needs more flexibility in hiring, firing, promoting, etc, yet it does not identify any factual cases that national security has been hampered under the present personnel system, other than subjective demagoguery. If the Secretary of Defense, who seeks to have total, and unquestioned, power does not know the differents between honest negotiation and collobaration, how does he expect those under to? On page 7555, Guiding Principles and Key Performance Parameters, it states, "The guiding pricnicples are: Put mission first-- support national security goals and strategic objectives, {during every major conflict that this country has been, as well as during peace times, federal employees has always put National Security first, and did whatever required of them for all goals to be met in a timely manner.}