NSPS Startup Still Set, but Limited

The Defense Department has indicated that it will go ahead with the startup of parts of its national security personnel system April 30 as previously indicated, involving only a small number of employees an only those parts of the system not affected by an injunction that a federal judge has issued against the labor relations and appeal rights parts of the system. The phase-in of the pay for performance and certain other elements of NSPS is to begin with only a small fraction of the DoD workforce, a “spiral 1.1” group of about 11,000 employees, mainly in headquarters and other specialized—and non-unionized—settings. The second group, known as spiral 1.2, is set to come under NSPS in October and a third group, spiral 1.3, in January 2007. It’s currently unknown how large those groupings will be; DoD components are reassessing earlier plans that would have included more than 200,000 employees. Only employees in spiral 1.1 would see an effect on their January 2007 raises, with others affected no earlier than 2008.