What’s Ahead on NSPS

The Defense Department has finished the “meet and confer” period with unions representing its employees over the new national security personnel system—sessions that left the unions largely dissatisfied—and next will prepare a report to Congress on the meetings. After that report is issued, there will be a waiting period of 30 days for Congress to take action, after which DoD could issue final rules. According to the NSPS implementation office, the new personnel policies will not meet the earlier stated goal of beginning around July 1 but instead will be deployed on the following schedule: labor relations system effective for all bargaining unit employees “in late fiscal year 2005” (that is, sometime before October); performance management system for the first set (about 60,000) of affected employees, called “spiral 1.1,” in “early fiscal year 2006”; human resources system (classification, compensation, staffing, workforce shaping) and revised appeals rights for spiral 1.1 employees in January 2006 after the January federal pay raise. All employees are to get the January 2006 federal raise on the same terms as other federal employees.