The Pentagon just posted an action plan online that discusses how it will wind down the pay-for-performance elements of the the Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System. Interestingly enough, the report says there were three leading factors that caused Defense Secretary Robert Gates to scratch pay-for-performance, even though a NAPA report advised against it:
- First, the operational tempo in Defense’s intelligence agencies is so high that making such a major change — especially when employees are so concerned about it — could distract employees from their mission.
- Second, “congressional support necessary to undertake and support such a change at this time is mixed at best.” Reading between the lines, it sounds like the level of opposition on Capitol Hill to continuing DCIPS must have been significant.
- And lastly, Gates noted that the non-intelligence parts of the department are moving away from pay-for-performance as the National Security Personnel System ends. And that could complicate matters if pay-for-performance employees work side-by-side with employees who were shifted back to the General Schedule and receive regular pay raises each year.
Defense also said it will publish a comprehensive change management plan by Oct. 31 that sets a process and timeline for moving DCIPS employees to a GS-like structure. Those employees will be classified as GG employees.
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This restores some of my faith in the system.
All of us who wrote and called our elected officials concerning DCIPS should be proud of their actions.
Unbelievable… back to the old way where you get paid for doing only as much as needed to not be fired? where’s the incentive for this country to excel? The company I retired from instituted pay for performance some 20 years ago & it weeded out the deadwood.. those that were getting raises just because of years of service…. You all ought to be ashamed of being afraid to excel..
It took a long time and was another colossal waste of the taxpayers money. Why anything that that corrupt bunch of morons in the Bush administration came up with could have merited the level of review and attention that DCIPS received is beyond me. It was an obvious piece of crap from the beginning. A lot of good ppl left Federal service because of this crap and because Obama said he agreed with it! Better late than never I guess.
Rumor is we will go back to the GG grade system with steps and that only bonus will be addressed via the Pay Pool silly system
GG: Yes, that is correct. DCIPS workers will be put on a GG system, and the current pay pool process for handing out bonuses will not change.
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I sure am glad that this system is going back to GS! Congress, etc., first led us to believe that DCIPS/NSPS would be a great incentive to attract newer applicants, etc., but would also be cost-effective. It wasn’t cost-effective – all I saw were scores of employees receiving more money than the previous highest GS grade/step they were before the conversion. Now they make more than they should have. Also, I know of one employee who went from GS-12/10 to a salary comparable to GS-14/5! How in the world did her superiors justified this out-of-control increases? She is a nice person, but she is still doing the work of a GS-11 or GS-12. Hmmm!
I am happy to return to the GG scale even though as a very hard working federal employee with Exceptional ratings, I would have benefited from DCIPs but I saw considerable flaws in DCIPS. Supervisors always had a method in place to prevent step increases but they never did exercise that right. A low performing government employee would stay in government service and be perfectly happy to never get another increase because they would never be able to get and keep a job out the outside if they were that bad. It wasn’t an incentive to have employees perform or to recruit new employees. There are inequities everywhere, not just in government. As a government employee I work my butt off and produce and perform duties way above my position description. I work very hard and I’m very good at what I do. I’ve seen poor performers given bonuses just when they do something (finally) good while exceptional performers don’t get rewarded and I’ve seen people promoted – just to get them to move to another job. I did not benefit from the conversion & lost a partial step increase – now forever lost when I go back to the GG scale.