NFFE Objects to 'Do Over' Recommendation on NSPS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Randy Erwin, Legislative Director

Phone: (202) 257-0948

Washington, D.C. – Today, the Defense Business Board released their review of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) in a report to the Secretary of Defense.  The report recommends a “reconstruction” of NSPS, but falls short of calling for abolishment of the controversial plan.

“We expected the report to look much the way it did,” said William R. Dougan, National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees.  “We are very disappointed with the report’s recommendations.  NSPS has been a complete and utter failure, and the report acknowledges this.  The recommendation to keep NSPS going in light of the program’s failed history is baffling to us.  NSPS should be discarded once and for all.”

While the plan recommended that the moratorium on new conversions to NSPS continue, the report did not call for those currently under NSPS to be reverted back to the GS system.

“We don’t want a ‘do over’ on NSPS, and that is what the report’s recommendation amounts to,” said Dougan.  “The Pentagon has had six years to get NSPS right, and they have failed miserably to do so.  The Defense Business Board had the opportunity to recommend bold action that the failures of the personnel system necessitate, but the Board did not do that.  They recommended a do over.  That recommendation is unacceptable to us.”

With government-wide personnel reform on the President’s agenda, NFFE questions the utility of continuing to implement a failed plan that has a toxic reputation among department employees.

“If the recommendation is to scrap NSPS as it exists today, we should not bother creating a new NSPS in its place,” said Dougan. “OPM Director Berry has already indicated that he wants to look at the creation of a new system for the federal government as a whole. It would only make sense to focus our efforts on working with OPM and other federal unions to create a system that would work for all federal agencies, including the Department of Defense.  Defense workers do not trust NSPS, and the repackaging of this failed system simply will not fly.”

“We do not disagree with everything in the report,” Dougan said. "We thought the report’s findings were entirely accurate, but we strongly disagree with their recommendation to reconstruct NSPS.  NSPS needs to go.”

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