NSA pruning its workforce with early retirement deals

The National Security Agency began offering early retirement packages to most of its employees and buyouts to employees with specific skills last week in an effort to streamline its workforce. According to an agency representative, several voluntary separation programs will run through June 2002. Buyouts of up to $25,000 will be offered to some employees in the Human Resources Services and Installations and Logistics departments, depending upon their length of service. The incentives begin just as Project Groundbreaker, an outsourcing deal struck earlier this year, takes effect. Under the Project Groundbreaker contract, 750 NSA technology specialists will become NSA contractors with Computer Sciences Corp., doing the same work for the same salary. Unions criticized the contract because it was awarded without public-private competition. Agency officials attribute the recent wave of downsizing initiatives to imbalances in skills, which require the agency to better "align the skills mix within the agency," according to an NSA representative. "NSA's manpower management initiatives are designed to help us focus directly on the core missions of providing foreign signals intelligence and protecting national security-related information systems," the representative said. Agency officials said that layoffs would be used only as a last resort. "Our strategy also includes offering retirement planning seminars for career transition workshops, and networking with other agencies and private industry for outside employment options," agency officials wrote in a statement. Agency officials also plan to host job and career fairs for affected employees. Earlier this year the agency hosted its first-ever job fair, seeking to recruit people with experience or education in computer science, mathematics, engineering, signal analysis, language, data collection, "cryptanalysis" (the practice of breaking secret codes) and intelligence analysis.