The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is crying foul about a Pentagon’s proposal to revamp the civilian workforce’s policies and procedures for promotions, pay increases, and hiring. AFGE’s President David J. Cox calls this proposal “a flashback to the National Security Personnel System (NSPS).” Cox considered NSPS to be “discriminatory and harmful to the workforce,” so Congress repealed it within two years of the system going into effect.

The Pentagon proposes to shift civilian employees from a Title 5, which covers most federal employees, to a Title 10, which mainly covers the military. This shift would open up other means of employee assessment to the Pentagon, such as written exams, personality and skill tests, and psychological evaluations. AFGE’s Cox says that the main issue is that the change gives “the current Defense secretary and any future secretary a blank check to craft a personnel system that could easily undermine…a merit-based civil service system.”

So if AFGE is so against the Pentagon’s Force of the Future plan, which is aimed at overhauling one-size-fits-all policies that date back to WWII, does that meant that the General Schedule (GS) system is ideal? Most would agree that the GS pay scale that was formalized in 1949 is problematic due to its emphasis on longevity and not on performance. The demise of NSPS should raise some serious questions. Did it fail due to poor planning and execution, or is it not possible for the federal government to link pay and performance? The answer is probably a ‘yes’ to all of those options. The Pentagon should have walked away with a lot of lessons learned from the NSPS experiment.

Profit vs. Non-Profit

One of the real issues with any change to the system that seeks to mimic for-profit organizations is that the federal government is not a for-profit organization. The federal government’s source of income is from taxpayers. No one wants to pay more taxes so their federal employees feel more motivated and stay working for the federal government. Tight budget constraints controlled by popular opinion and Congress make it difficult to successfully and fairly implement a pay-for-performance system.

At the very least, plans aimed at overhauling or building a system from scratch should be met with much caution. Until management is willing to use or streamline the flexibilities that the current GS system has to offer, we should not be spending more taxpayer money to implement a new system. Federal managers can give quality step increases, which is a jump within a pay grade, but managers don’t due to the level of paperwork and because it’s not typically used. The GS system also offers features, like retention bonuses and paid time off awards.

The GS system should be the starting point for any reform. Gradual changes to the system will be met with less resistance, could be more effective, and would take less time to implement. We do not have to choose between what was created in 1949 and a totally new Force of the Future. The GS system would benefit from evolution instead of revolution.

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Jillian Hamilton has worked in a variety of Program Management roles for multiple Federal Government contractors. She has helped manage projects in training and IT. She received her Bachelors degree in Business with an emphasis in Marketing from Penn State University and her MBA from the University of Phoenix.