GAO: Defense must make cultural, procedural changes to NSPS

If the Defense Department decides to move forward with the National Security Personnel System, it must build a performance culture and establish credible third-party reviews of employee ratings to prevent bias, the Government Accountability Office told Congress in written comments on Monday.

"Moving too quickly or prematurely to implement such [pay-for-performance] programs, whether at DoD or elsewhere, can significantly raise the risk of doing it incorrectly," Brenda Farrell GAO's director for defense capabilities and management, wrote to Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee. Farrell's response was a follow-up to an April 1 hearing on the future of NSPS. "Hasty implementation could also set back the legitimate need to move to a more performance- and results-based system for the federal government as a whole."

In March, the Pentagon suspended further expansions of NSPS, pending a review. The move stalled the conversion of 2,000 employees who were scheduled to move into the pay-for-performance this spring. Employees who already are covered by NSPS will continue to operate under the system.

Farrell said ideally, agencies would not implement pay-for-performance systems until they have established rigorous, credible performance management evaluations and won employee buy-in. But if Defense decides to move forward with NSPS, it should demonstrate a commitment to addressing employees' concerns.

She said the NSPS review, conducted by Defense and the Office of Personnel Management, also should provide an opportunity for the department to carry out an internal assessment that would take under consideration employee feedback from surveys and GAO recommendations. The members of the joint review committee were announced on Friday.

Farrell also provided more details on a recommendation that Defense have third parties review ratings for possible bias. She noted that while the department was best-equipped to design its own review and appeals processes, creating a pilot program where an independent entity such as a human capital office reviewed performance ratings awarded in a separate division, could be a solution. Such a review would be independent from the chain of command and free of any bias.

But Matt Biggs, legislative director for the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said he was skeptical that even significant reforms could make NSPS credible to employees. "The very foundation by which NSPS was created is flawed and like anything else, if the foundation is not sound then the structure itself…is doomed to failure," he said.