FEDweek Weekly Issue
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

1. NSPS Called a Work In Progress
DoD's national security personnel system remains a work in progress, with
only limited data available to assess whether it is meeting its goals, according to a Congressional Budget Office study. CBO said that "there is little evidence" that it could draw on to assess whether, for example, NSPS is improving DoD's ability to recruit and compensate employees.  However, it noted employee surveys that show large majorities of employees who have not been put in NSPS are skeptical of the program, and that only small minorities of those who have been put in it believe it is an improvement over general federal personnel rules. "Whether employees perceive NSPS as an improvement over the GS system could affect their support for the new system," CBO said, adding that the survey results to date "could portend unfavorable views about personnel processes under NSPS."

To see more, go to: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/97xx/doc9705/11-26-NSPS.pdf

2. Pay for Performance System a Key
-----------------------------------
CBO said that one goal of NSPS is to motivate employees to perform better
on the job by emphasizing pay for performance, through new procedures for
appraising and rewarding employees. CBO compared the results of the first
rating and reward cycles for employees under NSPS with several other similar systems operating under demonstration project authority. For example, it said far fewer NSPS employees received above average ratings compared to those in a Commerce Department project; however, the numbers also show that virtually no employees in either received unsatisfactory ratings. CBO said that it remains to be seen how the system relates to the achievement of organizational goals, but warned that in general, such goals are "usually stated in terms that are probably too broad to allow for a straightforward link to the duties and responsibilities of individual jobs."

3. Breakdown of Ratings Examined
---------------------------------
The CBO report also looked into the distribution of ratings, an issue that
employee organizations have raised as part of their contention that ratings
would be subject to various forms of bias. The report said the average rating in the 2007 ratings cycle for whites was 3.5, for blacks 3.3, and for other minority groups, 3.4. However, it said there was a stronger difference in ratings by pay level, with employees in higher levels of pay bands tending to get higher ratings. That "partly explains the differences among groups of employees" since the percentages of whites in the higher levels is greater than in the lower levels, CBO said. Men and women received the same average rating, and so did employees under age 40 versus  age 40 and up. CBO said the more significant difference in payout actually was by DoD component, with Army employees getting an average 3.8 percent of salary base pay raise plus an average 2.1 percent bonus, with while employees of the Navy got 2.9 and 1.2 percent on average, respectively.