Employee transition from NSPS to GS personnel system underway

By Col. Deborah B. GraysJuly 16, 2010

Employee transition from NSPS to GS personnel system underway
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

Commander's Message

Garrison Commander

Fort McPherson & Fort Gillem

While it may seem changes in our professional environment didn't become part of our major focus here until BRAC was announced, the truth is, it's always been part of our working world.

In fact, we're undergoing a major transition in the near future that has nothing to do with that most-common acronym.

Within the next couple of months, many of our employees will transition from the National Security Personnel System to the General Schedule system. For a lot of you, the change will feel like returning to an old friend (albeit a friend with many fewer pages where annual performance appraisals are concerned!).

For others, who have never worked as a GS employee, the transition will mean learning a whole new personnel system.

Either way, affected employees have a lot of questions. There are many aspects to the conversion from one system to another that we already know.

For example, employees returning to the GS system will be placed under the Army's Total Army Performance Evaluation System for performance management.

Also, the Congressional mandate repealing the NSPS system states no employees will lose income as a result of the conversion.

Human resources personnel in each of our commands continue to receive guidance to help transitioning employees make the leap from one system to the other as smoothly as possible.

In the garrison, we will host an NSPS transition town hall meeting Aug. 3 at 1:30 p.m. in the Fort McPherson Post Theater to provide information to affected employees.

I recommend transitioning employees in our customer commands coordinate with your supervisors and human resources personnel to determine your avenues for gaining information about the conversion.

In addition to local personnel resources, employees can visit the Army NSPS Web site at http://cpol.army.mil/library/general/nsps/repeal.html. From this site, employees have access to the "GS-101 Training Course" and "Performance Management: A Tool to Achieve Results" online courses, which transitioning employees are required to complete by Aug. 15.

The Army NSPS Web site is expected to be updated often to provide current information on the transformation and new training opportunities.

Another NSPS Web site, provided by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, is located at www.cpms.osd.mil/nsps/.

From this site, users can see how many federal employees have transitioned so far, read or download an "NSPS to GS Transition Guide," get answers to frequently asked questions and use a transition simulator.

NSPS was enacted within the DoD through the FY04 National Defense Authorization Act and signed into public law by President George W. Bush Nov. 24, 2003. At its inception, the enactment of the NSPS program was touted as a key pillar of DoD's ongoing transformation effort and a historically significant example of modern U.S. Civil Service reform.

NSPS was repealed by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, which requires all employees to be transitioned out of NSPS by Jan. 1, 2012.

Garrison employees here are scheduled to transition by August 15, with a final deadline of September 30.

In an American Forces Press Service news release dated June 10, John H. James Jr., director of the Pentagon's NSPS Transition Office, notes the challenges associated with transferring employees between two fundamentally different classification and pay systems.

The release explains NSPS is based on pay bands that encompass a broad range of duties and responsibilities and allows employees to advance within a single pay band based on performance.

In contrast, the GS system tightly defines duties and responsibilities in discrete pay grades based on a position's difficulty, responsibility and qualification requirements.

Here at Fort McPherson and Fort Gillem, change has become very much a part of our lives.

We should handle this major conversion the same way we deal with all the other transitions affecting us today - by getting as much information as we can, being as proactive as possible, asking the questions we need answered and, above all, being the epitome of the professional workforce that we are.