| Comment Number: | OL-10511345 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 3:08:06 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 National Security Personnel System (NSPS) was marketed and sold to Congress as an answer to complaints within the Department of Defense (DOD) that managers cannot compete for the best job candidates, recruitment takes to long, and it is to hard to deal with and fire poor performers under the existing federal personnel system. The theory being that solving these complaints is the key to resolving a very real problem of poor performance by the DOD. The reality is that the root causes of the complaints are self-inflicted. The reality is the majority of managers are poorly trained and not held responsible and accountable. The reality is the current recruitment process can be timely and, when not circumvented, provides a high degree of probability of finding the best candidates. The reality is that for the vast majority the pay system is attractive enough to recruit and retain high performing employees. The reality is it is not hard to fire poor performers. The removal process is uncomplicated and provides appropriate safeguards for all involved. The problem with DOD performance is not that the federal personnel system and related laws are inadequate and poor performance by DOD is not due to bad or poor performing employees. In fact, DOD performance would be much worse if it were not for the dedication of employees to ensuring quality products and services are provided in spite of the poor quality of management and leadership within DOD. The real problem with DOD performance is that operations and present systems are fully controlled by an unconstrained management and subverted by political management agendas. The real problem with DOD performance is that organizations are managed and led by managers who are not held responsible or accountable for organizational performance. The following two examples illustrate how unconstrained leadership subvert system processes and the resulting impacts of such actions on organizational mission execution and performance. (Example 1) Senior Army leadership recognized that given the skill and education level of the workforce, supervisory to employee ratios should be raised to an overall average of 1 supervisor for every 25 employees. This is based on the premise that supervisors would be fulfilling their true roles as managers and that teamwork rather than close supervision provides a much more effective work process. While an excellent strategy, lower level leadership gave in to complaints by managers that they did not want to do that many performance appraisals. To subvert this requirement and higher-level oversight, leadership reclassified many supervisors as team leaders with supervisory responsibly. Concealing supervisors as team leaders avoided their being reported in the ratio and enabled organizational managers to give the appearance of trying to meet the 1:25 supervisor-to-employee ratio. Even with this strategy, organizations had difficulty in meeting even a 1:10 ratio. Thus, the benefits envisioned by senior Army Leaders were never realized and employees remained over managed and under led. (Example 2) Army managers complained for years that they needed classification authority (i.e., salary setting authority) to recruit and retain the best workforce. Army leaders relented to these complaints by eliminating onsite and trained classifiers and giving managers authority to classify jobs. Now and just a few years later, organizations are faced with high labor costs caused by an explosion of high salaries and the elimination of lower salaried employees. The impacts to Army are two fold--services are too costly and higher graded employees are underemployed. The results are the elimination of some services to the public, maintenance backlog, mission failures, cost of employee buyouts, declining employee morale and fatigue, and management attention directed at fire fighting rather than planning and control. Specific comments and recommendations to 5 CFR XCIX and Part 9901, National Security Personnel System and Subparts are almost impossible because the underlining theme is to undermine a vast array of laws or provisions related to law that are designed to safeguard DOD civilian personnel from abuses. One would literally have to address volumes of provisions without insight into the exact process DOD will establish to implement NSPS provisions. The overriding assessment is that there is not nor has there been a proven need for such drastic change as NSPS. The stated premise is that DOD must change the way it manages and leads its unique civilian workforce and that creating a new personnel system that creates a performance culture is the key. The fallacy in this logic is that creating a system that puts even greater control into the hands of managers and leaders that are presently failing to use existing effective systems will not lead to improvement. There are sufficient provisions in the existing civil service and merit systems to create a high performance culture. As stated previously and worthy of repeating, the problem is that the vast majority of managers are not trained, educated, or monitored in their use of existing systems nor are they held accountable for organizational performance. For example, the existing performance appraisal system can be used effectively if managers used the system as designed instead of viewing it as a must do exercise. The solution to the problem in DOD is to train and monitor manager performance, establish agency mission performance criteria, and then measure and hold managers and leaders accountable. If held accountable, managers will be more motivated to ensure that the best candidates and not simply personal favorites are hired and selected. Probably the most abused system in DOD is in the selection and promotion process, an observation common in every employee survey. NSPS has the potential of exacerbating existing problems by legalizing exceptions to selection and promotion processes. Otherwise recognized my many as a return to the spoils system. One provision even allows the hiring non-citizens. DOD leadership needs to explain to the public and Congress why they need to establish, fund, and staff a personnel system that will duplicate an existing and effective system provided by the Office Personnel Management. In fact, OPM has been a leader in enabling the creation of high performance work environments in federal service. Under NSPS, OPM will be placed in a subservient capacity to the whims and desires of the DOD leadership. DOD leadership needs to explain to the public and Congress why they need to establish, fund, and staff a Labor Relations Board that will duplicate the roles and responsibilities of an existing agency, the Federal Labor Relations Authority. The DOD needs to justify to the public and Congress the need for incurring a costly, redundant, and highly disruptive process with high potential for failure when attention and effort should be directed toward improving day-to-day mission execution. NSPS will institute a very management intensive and more costly to operate pay system called pay banding. The current pay system with periodic steps has been effective in recruiting and retaining skilled personnel by providing periodic incentives for longevity. Similar to the proposed pay system, progression can be withheld for poor performers. There has been no proof provided that a pay band system will provide more incentive than the existing system or create a high performing work environment. The management of the NSPS pay system will not only be more costly, but will detract agency managers further from already neglected leadership and managerial responsibilities for mission execution. NSPS provisions will link performance management to pay. Some years back, a workable performance based appraisal system was implemented. To date managers remain grossly inept in using this performance system. Furthermore, there is no oversight by senior Army leadership to monitor execution of the performance system, to ensure managers are properly trained in the system, and that the system is perfected over time. Army’s weak attempt at performance system management was to monitor the timely submission of employee performance appraisals by managers. Even this is viewed as a failure since false upward reporting was common. It is frightening that performance management is one of the key provision or selling points of NSPS given the track record of managerial performance under the existing and much less rigorous performance system. It is not the leadership of DOD that self reports abuses of resources and funding, but individual employees and their unions. Even with the protections of existing laws, employees and union representatives still suffer from bringing abuses to light. NSPS will leave no protection for whistleblowers and will undermine the efforts of federal labor unions to address daily abuses in the workplace. Unions are unique in federal service and can play a significant role in helping to ensure that agencies such as DOD abide by our national laws and ethical expectations. The need to change to NSPS is like the weapons of mass destruction. The need doesn’t exist. The DOD leadership that allowed the abuses of our youth at our military academies, that demonstrated to the world that we are not much better than a third rate country when it comes to the treatment of prisoners, and that sent troops to war ill equipped is what needs to be fixed—not the federal civil service personnel system and not the men and women that overcome daily challenges in the workplace to ensure mission execution. If Congress allows the enactment of NSPS in DOD, they are doing a great disservice to dedicated federal employees, the taxpayers, and our nation. It is simply the wrong thing to do.