Defense Moving To New Personnel SystemBy Stephen Barr T he Pentagon plans to take its first major step this week toward creating a new personnel system that will change how the Defense Department pays, promotes and disciplines 746,000 civil service employees. On Wednesday, officials will announce the first wave of defense employees selected to leave the decades-old General Schedule pay system and join the National Security Personnel System. Commanders at military bases and managers of defense offices across the country will inform their employees that they are in the inaugural class for "Spiral One," the term that the Pentagon is using for the launch. Tens of thousands of Defense civilians will be tapped for the initial stages of Spiral One, followed by thousands more in subsequent stages, until the department reaches a congressionally imposed limit of 300,000 workers, NSPS officials said. In practical terms, the Spiral One employees probably will not see any change for several more months. The Pentagon is still writing a proposed regulation creating the NSPS and hopes to publish it by late January. If the schedule holds, agencies in Spiral One will probably see new workplace rules by midsummer. Mary Lacey, NSPS executive officer, said in a recent interview that she would not preview which units will be in Spiral One. But she said volunteers, particularly from the Army, have stepped forward. "Organizations that employed over 100,000 folks volunteered to be in the very first stage of Spiral One," she said. "There is a lot of interest and strong support in going to this system." But, she added: "There is also the fear of the unknown. Change is always a scary thing. And because we are still in the regulation-writing phase, we have not been able to be publicly explicit on all the design details." In late 2003, Congress passed legislation giving the
Pentagon permission to create a more flexible personnel system,
after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his top lieutenants
appeared before congressional committees to build support for an
overhaul. Planning for the new system, however, quickly snagged when Pentagon officials and labor leaders had a falling-out over a "concept" paper that unions claimed could lead to the end of collective bargaining and employee protections in the department. Pentagon officials denied being out to bust unions, but the controversy drew questions and concern from members of Congress. Rumsfeld brought the planning to a halt and put Navy Secretary Gordon R. England in charge of slowing down and establishing a design process. Under England, the department has conducted more than
50 town hall meetings, 101 focus groups and eight union meetings.
A number of union leaders, however, remain unhappy with the Pentagon's
course. Lacey said preliminary plans call for holding a "kickoff
conference" in late January where base commanders, program
managers and others in leadership ranks can get training on the
proposed regulations. The evaluation process will probably last 18 months, in part because officials want to study how managers rate employees and then make pay decisions. If the system appears robust, Lacey said, the rest of the department, except for certain labs excluded by Congress, will move under the system. "There could be changes [in the regulations] -- likely to be some changes," Lacey said, despite her office's best efforts. "But that is the risk we take -- we want to get on with it." NSPS Developments: DOD Begins Implementation of NSPS Over Congressional Objections
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