The following questions/comments are submitted with respect to the NSPS Proposed Regulations Overview document dated 10 February 2005.  (page numbers are given in parenthesis to aid in finding reference statements).

GUIDING PRINCIPLES (page 4)
# 2. Respect the individual; protect rights guaranteed by law. 
Will the rules/regulations for FLSA, ADA, EEO still apply ?  How are rights going to be protected to prevent abuse by management?

# 5.  Ensure accountability at all levels.
How will accountability be ensured at all levels? Currently, military supervisors are not held accountable for not being trained in managing CivPers assigned and frequently take actions not consistent with managing federal employees  (i.e. denying training opportunities for professional/personal development, using rank to intimidate others, failure/excessive delays in processing CivPers documentation such as evaluations, time cards, training request, etc).  Of particular concern are those military supervisors who manage civilians but do not like working with them and are openly against working with the CivPers workforce.

# 7.  Be competitive and cost effective.
What will prevent management from arbitrarily deciding to fire/demote a higher-salaried employee in order to hire a lower-salary employee in an effort to be more “cost effective” even if the higher paid employee is performing satisfactorily in his job ?

KEY PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS (page 5)
High Performing:  What is the standard/definition of “high performing” and who will determine if the standard has been met?  How will the standard be measured? Will the standard be objective or subjective? What options will be available for an employee to dispute an evaluation that says they have not met the “high-performing standard” ?

Agile and Responsive: Does this give management the option to fire/dismiss personnel for no cause other than management desires to reshape organization?  Will displaced personnel then be eligible for RIF?  What will prevent management from giving “pink-slips” to CivPers on short-notice due to re-shaping mission requirements ?  Are designations such as “emergency-essential ”, “mission essential” going to be eliminated from job descriptions and if so, what benefits/obligations will such employees lose accordingly? What will happen to an individual when he turns over 50 and cannot be as agile and responsive like in his early years?  What law will protect the elderly employee?  Are they going to be demoted, moved to a different pay level or discriminated against because they are not performing at the same tempo?	

Credible and Trusted: What “checks and balances” will ensure system is “credible and trusted”  ?  It is not uncommon for illegal hiring to take place that doesn’t follow merit principles, “rule of three” and other HR practices. “Openness” of system will be “open” to who ? Management only  ? Employees  ?   It is difficult to trust when information is withheld, concealed, or wrapped in “vagueness” (i.e. NSPS, RIF, etc.) and employees are purposely kept out of command meetings that affect their careers, jobs and well-being. 

BENEFITS OF PROPOSED NSPS (page 6)
Employees will have greater opportunity to affect their pay through excellent performance: 
How can this possibly occur when the command refuses to send people to training that would make them better professionally ?  Individual effort and desire can only take someone so far if proper training is not available to encourage professional/personal development. Employees could effectively have career progression/advancement halted through no fault of their own, no matter how motivated they are to self-improve.  What will prevent military supervisors who do not express interest or devote sufficient time to CivPers assigned from not recognizing individual accomplishment and therefore earned promotion/pay opportunities ?  What recourse will employees have to argue their case against a supervisor who does not recognize their justifiable accomplishments ?

Managers will be able to recruit/retain high quality talent more effectively.
Does this relieve management of its obligation to train currently employed personnel whose skills are suddenly deemed “obsolete” ?  Theoretically, it seems an entire CivPers workforce staff could be fired/dismissed in order to hire new talent instead of offering re-training opportunities to current employees.  And if so dismissed, how will RIF be implemented to assist employees in finding other federal civil service jobs ?

RIF procedures:  How will “new and improved” RIF procedures determine or place greater emphasis on “performance” when two or more employees are of equal skills and/or ability, especially during the “infancy” stages of NSPS implementation where prior evaluations were mainly based on a “Acceptable/Unacceptable” criteria ?  Will a RIF’ed employee who has demonstrated satisfactory performance be guaranteed an equitable position/pay elsewhere? 

NSPS MAJOR DESIGN ELEMENTS (page 7)
Classification:  Will “occupational groupings” mirror current GS series (i.e 301, 390, etc) or will new groupings/series be developed  ?  If an individual in currently assigned to one series/grouping  (i.e. 301), will there be greater flexibility to convert to another series/ grouping  (i.e. 390) if qualified  ?  Are occupational standards still going to exist or will they be eliminated  ?  Since longevity is no longer of value in NSPS, will an individual be able to jump from a given level in a pay band to another higher pay band without any pre-determined “waiting” periods if qualified  ? What guidelines will determine the “qualification process”, objective or subjective standards, or will you just have to “know” somebody to hook you up with a better job through a “good-old-boy” network  ? 

Pay/Compensation:  What will determine “market sensitive pay” ?  Will an employee making a certain salary at one geographic location be subject to an increase or decrease of pay/payband if they accept the same type job in another geographic location ?  Will locality pay remain or be eliminated  ?  Will pay be adjusted to allow employees to live and work in high-costs areas  ?  (i.e. Washington, D.C. has numerous civil service jobs available, but most employees cannot work there as most govt salaries do not cover the cost of living there, effectively limiting available job choices/training opportunities due to financial reasons).  Better training  (and promotion opportunity)  is not readily available for all.

How will employees caught between career ladder advancement grades or “WIG” step increases be compensated  ?  Will they be awarded “due or nearly due” promotions that would have normally occurred if NSPS had not been implemented  ? 

REGULATORY CONSTRUCTION  (page 8)
What will prevent the “broad, enabling regulatory language” to be so vague as to allow several different people to read the same materials and come up with several different interpretations of what is really being said  ?  This is a common occurrence even today and necessitates an individual to call at least three different HR references hoping to find two that agree in its interpretation of a rule or regulation.  (An excellent example involved the transfer of CivPers from Puerto Rico to Mayport, FL due to base closure in PR. CivPers lost available entitlements due to erroneous interpretations from differing HR experts.  By the time the issue was resolved, it was too late to use valuable entitlements).

Who are the designated “employee representatives” that will look out for employees as part of the NSPS “continuing collaboration process”, especially if the employees are not part of a union or labor group ? Having command military personnel acting as civilian employee representatives creates a conflict of interest as they can be “readily-influenced” by senior mil personnel who have input on THEIR military evaluations, promotions, etc. (Honor, Courage Commitment doesn’t always win when fitreps are due).

CLASSIFICATION (page 9)
Pay Banding System:  In giving greater flexibility to assign new or different work, what safeguards will prevent management from assigning work not related to the actual job ?  (i.e. Can an office secretary be legitimately assigned “additional duties” to include cleaning toilets in the female’s restroom or other building spaces when she was hired to be a secretary ?;  Could  a radio technician be tasked to wash department vehicles ?).  Nothing stated so far in this NSPS Overview says it can’t be done. 
If an employee is not covered by a union or labor group, can he/she bargain with management themselves to find what is deemed an acceptable salary to both parties ?

What will determine what a current employee’s status is with regard to entry level, full performance level or supervisor ? (i.e. If in a current supervisory position, what determines the difference/level  attained within the supervisory payband structure between “full performance level”  and “senior expert” if longevity is no longer a factor ?  How can someone be a “senior expert” without longevity ? 

Would a recent college grad qualify as a “senior expert” because of his/her degree over a non-college grad employee who has several years of actual experience in a particular job field ?  Would “technical ability” to get a job done rate a higher status/payband as opposed to “diploma status” of an unproven technician to obtain “senior expert” status ?

Will personnel currently rated as at “full performance level” be subjected to possible loss of level and therefore result in a loss of pay due to NSPS reclassification ?

How will ‘market value” be determined for jobs with no civilian-sector equivalent job ? 

If  “GS” grades go away, how will equivalent “civilian-military” grades be established for purposes of entitlements in berthing accommodations, travel, per diem, etc with respect Joint Travel Regulations ?    

PAY/COMPENSATION  (page 11)

Proposed pay system is intended to attract, develop, retain and reward high-performing employees through appropriate compensation. What will prevent “good-old-boy” networks from developing within organizations that award “favorites” or friends of supervisors to reap undeserved awards and excludes well-deserving employees from receiving favorable performance pay increases because they may not be on a supervisor’s “best-buddy” list ?  Conversely, an employee who “rocks the boat” even when fully justified can easily be “black-listed” and find themselves not put up for promotions and/or annual pay raises. What recourse would an employee have against unfair treatment as described above ? Will “openness” of system include making public knowledge who did or did not receive bonuses ? What amount was received ?  
…Or, will it remain a “secretive” process to protect the guilty and punish the innocent ?

If there is no longer a “GS” pay scale in NSPS, what are employees promoted “to” if advanced  ?  How will you go from “full performance level” to say “senior expert” ?

Will employees be given “credit” for past accomplishments (training completed, innovative ideas, etc ?).

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT (page 12)

What will prevent untrained supervisors (in NSPS) from having an adverse affect upon CivPers assigned (evaluations, promotions, pay bonuses, etc)  ?  This is especially critical in areas where military supervisors are rating CivPers according to their “personal perceptions” of what CivPers should be doing, not the actual job assigned  (i.e. work late without compensation, create non-professional, hostile work environments, etc).  It has been my experience to work with military supervisors who openly dislike working with civilians and it shows in their workplace demeanor and actions/inactions.  Communications at various levels can be severely strained and even getting simple tasks accomplished can become monumental obstacles to overcome (i.e. getting training/IDP plans approved, time cards signed, action taken on correcting adverse working conditions, or getting approval for plans to increase unit efficiency). 

As I understand NSPS so far, its performance driven for rewards, bonuses, etc.  If a supervisor doesn’t give due credit, the employee does not receive bonuses, etc.  Therefore, a military supervisor who doesn’t like CivPers can have an immediate adverse affect on a CivPer’s pay and promotion opportunities, but will not be immediately held accountable for unjust/omitted actions.  What measures are in place to correct the adverse impact experienced by employees ?  Even if CivPers are allowed to make an evaluation comment upon a military supervisor’s performance, it can just as easily be removed or deleted by more senior personnel writing the final military evaluations.  (The MilSupv gets off “scott-free” with no real repercussions while the employee in question has lost a possible promotion or pay bonus).
High-turnover of military supervisors for short or long term periods due to TAD and/or transfer adversely impact CivPers  (i.e. 3 different supervisors within a 2 month period, all untrained in current CivPers management/practices).  Command places low priority on holding MilSupvs accountable to attend designated training. To the best of my knowledge, no MilSupvs at my present command have completed CivPers Management courses other than the COS.  What in NSPS will prevent continuation of this situation and its negative impact on the CivPers workforce ?  What provisions are in place to remedy a situation where an untrained NSPS supervisor is assigned CivPers ?  If he/she cannot legally evaluate the CivPers because he/she did not complete NSPS training, what happens to the evaluations of the affected CivPers ?  Are they going to be evaluated by another individual who is not even their assigned supervisor ?
Will the untrained supervisor be allowed to make verbal comments to influence someone else to perform the evaluations  ?  Will the CivPers  “lose” an evaluation reporting period until a new supervisor is trained and therefore lose opportunities for pay increases, bonuses, etc when the command is at fault  ? How would lost promotion/pay opportunities be recouped by the employee ?

What NSPS guidelines will determine/encourage fair ratings of CivPers ? 

In summary, I am deeply concerned that there are currently too many unanswered questions and “loopholes” that will be detrimental to employees governed by NSPS. There are too many items that are still too vague or poorly defined. A major “cultural- mindset” change will be required between many military supervisors and civilian workforce members if fair and just compensation and rewards are to be realized while striving to achieve mission goals and accomplishments.  

Critical items will be the issue of accountability and the setting of clearly defined standards which so far are stated as “will be” but fails to show “how” it will be implemented and what are the REAL consequences for non-compliance other than a “possible” comment in an officer’s fitrep.  In implementing NSPS, it will devalue the system and be negatively received if it becomes “enshrouded” in secrecy and is not properly promulgated to the DoD workforce. With NSPS, the goal appears to be to “emulate” the private sector in order to create a better DoD workforce, but it will do so at employee’s expense as evidenced by the NSPS ideology that “longevity and loyalty” no longer matter in the big scheme of things. How secure will an employee feel if he can be “terminated” at the whim of management ?  How productive will an employee be under those conditions ?  If NSPS emulates private industry, it only seems logical that federal employees will “emulate” their private industry counterparts, resulting in higher employee turnover, frequent transfers to better paying jobs and disruption of  “continuity” and “corporate knowledge” within a command.  In emulating the private sector, you also inherit the problems of the private sector workforce, and in the long run, the attraction to public service will be even less appealing than now as government employees will NEVER be on par with the wages paid in private industry  (i.e. even the President of the United States makes significantly less salary than many CEO’s of large corporations).  Something more than money must be used to entice good people to work in government service (i.e. job security) and by discounting longevity and loyalty, NSPS is taking a big step in the wrong direction.  

I believe that there does exist some “dead-weight” among the CivPers workforce (as there is in any large organization), but if supervisors and managers were held accountable, that “dead-weight” would have worked its way out of the system. If supervisors and managers were not held accountable in the past, why is there any reason to believe under NSPS that they will be held accountable now ?  

If my comments seem to concentrate on the pessimistic-side of the issue, it is only because of bad workplace experiences encountered working with untrained supervisors who had no concept of or desire to learn about basic CivPers Management principles and the failure to realize that the DoD CivPers workforce is a valuable complement to our military services in carrying out national policy and protecting our country.