Army employees among first to test NSPS
December 15, 2004
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Dec. 15, 2004) - Army employees at several arsenals and depots will be among the first to test a new DoD civilian personnel system.
The National Security Personnel System, or NSPS, will be implemented in groupings called "spirals," Navy Secretary Gordon England announced Dec. 15. Spiral One will will include about 300,000 general-schedule employees of all military services and some DoD agencies.
Spiral One will be rolled out in three phases over an 18-month period beginning as early as July 2005, England said.
In the first phase, Spiral 1.1, more than 1,000 Army employees will convert to NSPS at each of the following locations:
Huntsville, Ala.
Rock Island, Ill.
Warren, Mich.
Fort Monmouth, N.J.
Picattinny Arsenal, N.J.
Tacoma, Wash.
Locations in the first phase with more than 500 Army employees converting to NSPS include:
Anniston Army Depot, Ala.
Sacramento, Calif.
New Orleans, La.
Vicksburg, Miss.
Red River Army Depot, Texas
Other locations in the first phase with at least 100 employees converting include:
Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
Herlong Sierra Ordnance Depot, Calif.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Colorado Springs, Colo.
San Francisco, Calif.
Fort Riley, Kan.
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.
Natick, Mass.
St. Paul, Minn.
St. Louis, Mo.
Watervliet, N.Y.
Tulsa, Okla.
Memphis, Tenn.
Galveston, Texas
Fort Worth, Texas
Hundreds of other locations will include just a handful of employees converting to NSPS in Spiral 1.1, according to a DoD data base. For instance, 73 employees will convert at Fort Richardson, Alaska; An estimated 19 will convert at Fort Benning, Ga.; eleven at Fort Gordon, Ga.; 20 at Fort Stewart, Ga.; 16 at Fort Detrick, Md.; 8 at Fort Campbell, Ky.; 35 at Fort Bliss, Texas; 90 at Fort Hood Texas; 27 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas; 29 at Fort Belvoir, Va.; 31 at Fort Eustis, Va.; 12 at Fort Lee, Va.; 10 at Fort Monroe, Va.; and 8 at Fort Myer, Va.
The group of employees converting in Spiral 1.1 from all services will number about 60,000, England said. In addition, he announced the NSPS Labor Relations system is scheduled to be implemented across the Department of Defense by summer 2005.
The second phase of implementation, Spiral 1.2, will include many other Army depot employees and a number of districts in the Corps of Engineers. It will include 684 Army employees in Jacksonville, Fla.; more than 1,000 at Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pa.; almost 1,700 at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; more than 1,200 at Fort Monmouth; about 3,800 in Huntsville; more than 1,000 in Warren, Mich.; 603 in Natick; 486 in Kansas City, Mo.; 786 in Omaha, Neb.; 95 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.; 142 at Fort Bragg, N.C.; 832 in Corpus Christi, Texas; 576 at Toele Army Depot, Utah; 885 at Fort Belvoir; 144 at Fort Lee; 482 in Seattle, Wash.; and 281 in Walla Wall, Wash.
The third phase, Spiral 1.3, will include 2,824 employees converting to NSPS in Washington, D.C. Commands with more than 500 converting under this phase include:
Fort Benning
Fort Gordon
Fort Stewart
Fort Riley
Fort Campbell
Fort Knox, Ky.
Louisville, Ky.
Fort Polk, La.
Aberdeen Proving Ground
Baltimore, Md.
Detroit, Mich.
Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
New York City
Fort Bragg
Fort Bliss
Fort Hood
Fort Sam Houston
Fort Belvoir
Fort Sill, Okla., will have 481 employees convert under Spiral 1.3, according to the DoD schedule.
The announcement of the first phase of Spiral One participants at this time allows the leadership of those affected organizations to position themselves and look ahead to help prepare employees for the conversion, according to the DoD announcement. This will include training in what are called "soft skills," such as interpersonal communication, team building, and conflict management, to help people adjust to the change.
Spiral Two will comprise the remainder of the eligible workforce and will be initiated following an assessment of Spiral One and after the secretary of Defense certifies the Department's performance management system, officials said.
The law provides that the NSPS human resources system may not apply to organizations with more than 300,000 employees until the secretary of Defense determines and certifies that the department has a performance management system in place that meets the statutory criteria established for the NSPS performance management system. Spiral One will provide the basis for this certification prior to the deployment of Spiral Two, officials said. They said Spiral Three will comprise the DoD labs should current legislative restrictions be eliminated.
Congress authorized the new personnel system as part of the fiscal 2004 National Defense Authorization Act.
"NSPS provides an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of the department through a simplified personnel management system that will improve the way it hires and assigns, as well as compensate and reward its employees," England said. "It will provide the department with a modern, flexible and agile human resource system that can be more responsive to the national security environment, while preserving employee protections and benefits."
The new system will be fully implemented in the July 2007 to January 2008 timeframe, England said.
To view the entire list of NSPS Spiral One participants see
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2004/d20041214osd.pdf.
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