Nsps The New Department Of Defense Civilian Personnel System

NSPS, the new Department of Defense civilian personnel system : reaching readiness : hearing before the Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Ninth Congress, first session, April 12, 2005.

The purpose of this Joint Applied Project (JAP) is to examine and provide a thorough overview of the history of the Department of Defense's (DoD) civilian personnel system. The research will explore converting civil servants from the General Schedule (GS) pay system to the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), then converting back to the GS system. This JAP will explore the inception of the GS System and discuss the perceived advantages and disadvantages. It will also explore the reason for the change to NSPS and the enactment of NSPS through the National Defense Authorization Act for 2004. It will also discuss the effects of the transition to the new pay-for-performance system. It will then examine the concerns, perceived issues, and discuss the perceived advantages and disadvantages of NSPS. It will explore the reasons surrounding the reimplementation of the GS system and the abolishment of NSPS through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. The data collected and analyzed will address the preferences and the perceptions from the affected employees who experienced the implementation of NSPS. It will conclude discussing these findings with suggestions for further research into the DoD's Civilian Personnel System.

In response to more than a decade of downsizing and restructuring, the Department of Defense (DoD) is engaged in a human-resources strategic planning effort to address resulting imbalances in both skills and experience levels in many parts of DoD. The current human-resources strategic plan addresses the need to provide management systems and tools to support total workforce planning and informed decisionmaking (U.S. Department of Defense, 2003b). Attention to Department-wide civilian workforce planning stems in part from the President's Management Agenda of 2001 and the continuing assessments of Department-level progress on workforce planning. DoD civilian workforce-planning efforts are complicated and, at the same time, made more important by the implementation of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), slated to begin in 2006. The NSPS will replace the traditional federal civil service personnel management system within DoD, providing DoD managers with more management flexibility.

The Dept. of Defense (DoD) is in the process of implementing its new human capital system for managing civilian personnel -- the National Security Personnel System (NSPS). Key components of NSPS include compensation, classification, and performance management Implementation of NSPS could have far-reaching implications, not just for DoD, but for civil service reform across the fed. gov¿t. As of Feb. 2009, about 205,000 civilian employees were under NSPS. This report determined: (1) the extent to which DoD has implemented internal safeguards to ensure NSPS was fair, effective, and credible; and (2) how DoD civilians perceive NSPS and what actions DoD has taken to address these perceptions. Illustrations.

The 2004 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 10-136, November 24, 2003) gives the Department of Defense (DoD) authority to establish the National Security Personnel System (NSPS). This system will mark the most significant reform to civilian personnel management in 25 years. The DoD expects to implement the NSPS in a phased approach extending over two years, and is giving consideration to the Department of the Navy being the lead service. The NSPS will be built on best practices and lessons learned from nine DoD pilot programs that have been conducted in eight laboratories and one Pentagon acquisition organization. The NSPS is being designed to simplify an overwhelming job classification system, refocus performance appraisals, and link pay and retention to employee performance. Such a dramatic change to a system that has endured for so many years is bound to pose tremendous challenges to the DoD. This thesis will explore the challenges associated with pay-for-performance and provide a series of considerations that should be addressed during the implementation process. The thesis begins by discussing the history of the civil service system and its evolution toward a pay-for-performance system, then focuses on the results of three DoD pilot programs that implemented pay-for-performance in the last 25 years. It continues by exploring the present need for civil service reform, discusses the Department's expectations for the new NSPS, and offers some insights into the preliminary implementation plan. The thesis concludes by presenting research on public sector pay-for-performance systems and makes a series of recommendations which the DoD may want to consider in the course of developing and implementing the new pay-for-performance system.