GovernmentExecutive.com

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.

COMMENTS

• I've studied performance management systems in the civilian world and their success is predicated upon the fact that workers receiving the highest ratings will so increase customer satisfaction and corporate profit that the company will be able to afford to reward them appropriately. The problem is that government service is a "closed system." There is no profit from which to reward employees. We will all compete for the same dollars. And since our performance ratings will be forced into a "normal distribution curve" of 3 to 5, the only way to get ahead will be to schmooze the boss, get cutthroat with your colleagues, and always grieve your ratings. Is this what the government intends? Ronald Posted June 23, 2008 12:47 AM
• The issues highlighted in other comments are indeed true. However, the issue of greatest concern to the common civil servant is really about how much control first-line supervisors actually have. For example, will managers have carte blanche to award and reward those whom they like? What controls will exist to ensure that personnel at least receive some minimum pay raise and anything less will require justification by a manager. All of this is really more the direct result of mismanagement in the development of paybanding and a lack of meaningful communication to the working population. I have witnessed on many occasions the perception that management can do whatever they like and appear to believe that they are above the proverbial law. Yet at the same time managers do not necessarily know precisely where the laws that govern what you can and cannot do to employees begin and end. For example, I would posit that most members of management could not cite even one of the three rights guaranteed a person under the Privacy Act of 1974. The civil service system, as many may have experienced, is much akin to the not-for-profit industry but without the necessity for fundraising. As a result, the bureaucracy is best likened to an infinitely straight road that does not necessarily lead anywhere. Yet there is a definitive yellow line separating workers from managers and everyone as a whole from effective checks and balances. Know that my intent is not to cast the entire system in an utterly negative light. But these concerns are certainly on the minds of everyone whom paybanding will effect. Civil service, although necessary, could certainly gain from some of what paybanding has to offer. But the full weighing of its cost (other than money) does not yet appear to have been addressed. Johnny Posted May 29, 2008 11:13 AM
• The one writer comments in glowing magnificence on the corporate world and how they are paid under a performance system which by implication has produced "the most successful economy in the world. And a lot of efficient, globally competitive companies." That our economy is the envy of the world in not attributable to one factor only let alone to a perceived pay for performance in the corporate world. If there were truly pay for performance in the corporate world, CEO salaries and benefits would reflect some realm of reality to their propositional contributions and there would be no “golden parachutes” for CEO failures. So, Since we have an economy that makes the world envious. How much of a role does Government with it's billions of spending play in creating and maintaining that successful economy along with industry? What percentage of these "highly successful corporate performance salaries, benefits and perks" were put in place by these "whinny," government wage earning, civil servants, "who could not make it in the corporate world?" Apparently enough in government are performing to keep those in corporate industry well paid from the government’s multi-billion annually spent. Brings us to the point which the writer apparently can not or does not want to comprehend. The issue is not about performance, which is a loosely put upon term. Because federal workers already win the majority of competitions for their jobs and the re-competitions. Nor is the issue about paying one person more for doing more than another. The system currently in place has means for satisfying those whose work is above their peers. The issue, appears to this write, to be about control. Workers seeding their rights and benefits and in return being pitted against one another. Finally, another writer prays for “a performance based merit scale” to envelop the Government. The writer can place a metric on any job. The writer has created his own challenge, create a metric for the creators of the current “performance” based system based upon the satisfaction scale of the GE commentators. Instead of firing the team, let have a new coach….. Will Posted May 22, 2008 10:32 PM