Intelligence community to launch pay for performance system
Employees in 10 of the 16 intelligence agencies will be evaluated and compensated based on their job performance during the next year.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence will begin implementing a common pay-for-performance system across the 16 intelligence agencies in September, DNI Mike McConnell said at a briefing on Thursday.
During the next year, 10 of the 16 intelligence agencies will be implementing the new system, known as the National Intelligence Civilian Compensation Program, with employees receiving their first performance-based payouts in fiscal 2010. The remaining agencies, which include the CIA and ODNI, will begin conversion in fiscal 2010. Implementation of the system in the community's domestic agencies, such as the State, Energy, Treasury and Justice departments, is planned for the end of fiscal 2010, pending statutory approval.
"Think of this as a merit-based system that rewards high performers," McConnell said. "You get the behavior that you reward."
NICCP builds upon the intelligence agency's performance appraisal system, which will cover all 16 agencies by Oct. 1. The appraisal system rates all employees at the General Schedule Grade 15 and below on their collaboration, critical thinking, communication skills, technical expertise, integrity and accountability. NICCP now will link those ratings to pay.
Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for ODNI, said putting in place pay for performance across the intelligence community was necessary to recruiting and retaining a quality workforce, especially given the most recent results of the community's employee climate survey, which found only 28 percent of employees feel that steps were taken to deal with underperformers. "The other 72 percent either don't think or don't know," Sanders said. "I don't know which is worse."
The new pay program also was created to facilitate the community's joint duty program, which requires all employees to complete at least one assignment outside their home agency to be eligible for promotion to the senior ranks.
The new system collapses the General Schedule grades and steps into broad paybands. NICCP also will divide employees into three career groups -- technician and administrative support, professional, and supervisory -- with their own payband structure.
NICCP mirrors many of the principles of the Pentagon's National Security Personnel System, specifically with its training programs for supervisors and promotion tracks for employees who do not plan to become managers, officials said.
Other portions of the system will be modeled on the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's nine-year-old pay system. Employees who receive a rating of at least "fully successful," for example, will receive a raise equal to the governmentwide pay and locality adjustments plus performance-based raises or bonuses. Forced distributions for employee ratings will be "strictly forbidden," Sanders said.
Additionally, Sanders said, ratings given to employees by first-line supervisors may be changed by pay pool managers, provided the change is discussed with the employee and is approved by departmental and component-level leadership.
The system also will facilitate 360-degree feedback, where supervisors and executives receive anonymous reviews from their supervisors, subordinates, clients and peers.
Officials said implementation of a new pay-and-performance appraisal system has caused some anxiety among employees, largely because such attempts elsewhere in government have met with some controversy. John Allison, deputy director for human capital at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said much of the concerns have centered on whether employee pay would keep pace with the cost of living.
"To overcome some of the anxiety, we said that at the outset that successful employees will get the GS and locality," Sanders said. "That reduces the amount of money available for performance payouts, but it also reduces the anxiety and uncertainty."
Employees also are concerned about the collapse of the General Schedule into paybands, mainly because they could see only one or two promotions in an entire career, according to Allison. As a result, the intelligence community is looking into alternatives to rewarding employees by means other than just pay, he said.