| Comment Number: | OL-10510439 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 9:39:00 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:
Please permit me to weigh in on this subject. I am a 28 yr old male, college degree from PSU; graduated top of my class with a BS is Electrical Engineering. I have worked in private industry for approximately 4-5 years before coming to work for the government in June of 2004. Problems I see with the new system; 1) The yes man / woman syndrome, coupled with the flexibility to hire and fire could be devastating within an arena where decisions regarding major defense issues are made. Not to mention, as a government worker we must keep in mind that we are all stewards, if you will, of the tax-payers money and we need to make the best decisions we can without fear of retribution or retaliation. I would wager this was a significant reason we have the current system we have. Unconditional raises, under the GS scale, and limited firing power over government employees. This permits someone such as myself to not allow my own financial needs and well being to surface during decisions. 2) Nepotism and favoritism, this is an issue that plagues private industry and will certainly become an issue as we move into the new system. With many managers and hiring personnel looking to take care of friends and family members, along with the occasional brown-noser, the government is now opening itself to a new league of problems that it was never prepared for, and certainly never staffed to handle. 3) The rating situation, this is somewhere the government is sure to fail. First, there has always been this belief that only 10 percent of the workforce excels, 80 percent is average, and 10 percent fails to perform. In fact, in most private corporations managers are required to have just such a percentage within their working groups. The government has already started this process within the Pay Banding Demo. Having had some inside discussions with someone who is inside of the new rating scheme I was informed that he was instructed to maintain an average rating number within his working group. In fact, upper management instructed all managers that no one group should have an output in their group rating that exceeds that average standard. This is not only a poor way to manage personnel, but this approach fails to reward stellar performers in many ways. An example is when you have a manager who currently has a group of over achievers, bottom line let’s consider his team an NFL All-star team. Now in any case, whether the manager is sensitive to his team, and refuses to rate one person high, one person low, and the rest average, or in another case just rate everyone in the group as average, this is wrong. These same individuals will receive the same set of raises as the group next door, which may be a team of under achievers. This is a great example of problems this system faces in even its earliest stages. Several other problems come to mind, for example, the common concept of the brown-noser, or company suck up. Another example, overall, is the case where the majority of the work force begins to make decisions according to what they believe will make their boss happy, along with other members of upper management. Remember, this type of system works in private industry for many other factors other than pay for performance. Keep in mind, a prime motivator for someone in private industry is the success of the company, if the company fails then everyone in the company is out of a job. I can assure you, that is not the belief in the government employment environment, the mindset to this situation would be, “How does the government fail, and what effects would it have?” No matter how you look at this new system, it is flawed. To be honest, every system has it flaws, but for the government, this needs to be an issue we need to work harder to reduce, not increase.