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• I'm always amazed at the defenders of the GS system. I was exposed to it while detailed to Pax River and found it to be an utter disaster. There was no reward for accomplishment and no punishment for failure. So long as you could sit in a chair for 30 years, you'd get the same pay as a guy working his butt off. Luckily, I worked at China Lake which abandoned GS in the 70s for the Demonstration Project (DP). DP was in large part the prototype for NSPS. It worked wonders by giving employees a reason to work hard and achieve! Both recruitment of top talent and separation of under performers increased dramatically. The DP system took 2 to 3 years to work out the bugs and establish a common understanding of how it would work. So my advice to the NSPS naysayers is to be patient! It takes a cultural change for both management and employees used to the cushy safety of GS to recognize the benefits a performance-based system has to offer. J. Scott Posted May 12, 2009 11:31 PM
• PAA3 Should scare even those that aproved of NSPS up untill now. I watched as my rater logged in to paa3 recorded the initial appraisal verified his face to face with me and signed off on the Higher Level Reviewer. Each and every catagory now shows up as completed. I never logged on to the computer to verify and approve of the plan and our inter-action and the Higher Level Reviewer has no clue that his review has taken place in cyber space. I appealed my first NSPS rating and won. I was given a four on my secound rating just to keep me from appealing again, as my unit pulled a shinanigan and replaced my military supervisor whom had lost computer privlidges with a new rater one day after higher headquarters demanded my appraisal. Now half way through my third appraisal I will be handed off to a Guest Supervisor due to the fact that my rater and Higher Level reviewer are both leaving and no one else in my unit is trained in NSPS. Those of you that sing the praises of NSPS need to walk a mile in my shoes. This rating system controls my future, my families well being and my sanity, Get Rid of it NOW! Gary L Brown Posted April 5, 2009 3:15 AM
• I have the priviledge of teaching the basic NSPS courses at our installation. I am also part of the NSPS help desk. I am also an administrator in the Pay Pool. None of which was in my original PD. It takes a lot of my time. I have a lot of other responsibilities that still have to be accomplished. I have been converted to NSPS since February 08. I LIKE THE SYSTEM. Yes, it has some areas that need to be worked on but it will never work if you do not do your part to help build rather than tear down. What amazes me most is the 12 and 13 grades I see in the write ups doing the most whining. You now have a system that with some work has 5 to 8 people other than your supervisor to insure fair grading. It is not the supervisor that decides the final rating. Guess what? It is not GS anymore. Did you notice we had a very small percentage of people graded 1. That is because they got the message that what gets watched gets done. Walt Haines Posted April 2, 2009 10:53 AM