Civilian Personnel Reform at the Department of Defense: Lessons from the Failure of the National Security Personnel System

Abstract

The collapse of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) in 2009 was caused in significant part by the political miscalculations ofAdministration officials, who failed to build a broad base of bipartisan support and unnecessarily stoked opposition from federal employee unions and their allies in Congress. Future reform efforts could be more successful by taking a more incremental, targeted approach to build needed flexibilities into the Department of Defences civilian personnel system. This review suggests a series of targeted reforms that might help address ongoing deficiencies in the Departments hiring, performance management, and pay systems. These reforms are designed to address the original objectives of NSPS but without triggering the substantive and political problemsincluding all-out opposition by the federal employee unionsthat NSPS was unable to overcome.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2017
Accession Number
AD1123221

Entities

People

  • Peter Levine

Organizations

  • Institute for Defense Analyses

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Business Administration
  • Civilian Personnel
  • Congress
  • Department Of Defense
  • Employment
  • Governments
  • Homeland Security
  • Information Systems
  • Law
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Research
  • National Governments
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Political Systems
  • Public Administration
  • Security
  • Security Personnel
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Strategic Security Studies