New service delivers civilian personnel news to inbox

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Melanie Streeter
  • Air Force Print News
WASHINGTON --  Officials from the Air Force's National Security Personnel System implementation office recently unveiled a simple way to keep employees informed of coming changes to the Department of Defense civilian personnel system.

The 2004 National Defense Authorization Act established the NSPS, a new human resources management system for DOD civilians. A new chapter of Title 5, U.S. Code, allows the secretary of defense and the director of the office of personnel management to establish the new system. It will provide a new framework of rules, regulations, and processes -- rooted in the principles of flexibility and fairness -- that govern the way civilians are hired, compensated, promoted, and disciplined in DOD.

“This is going to be such a wide-spread, high-impact change to our workforce,” said Denise Walker, Air Force NSPS Implementation Team member. “We want our people to know what is going on as soon as the information is releasable.”

To accomplish this mission, the office created a new e-mail list server that will send updates to registered users. To register for the service, users may go to the NSPS Web site, https://www.dp.hq.af.mil/dpp/dppn/nsps/ and click on the registration link. That action opens a blank e-mail message from the user’s e-mail service. Then all the user has to do is click on "send."

“The server registers the e-mail address and sends a confirmation response,” Ms. Walker said. “It’s that simple.”

Once registered, users will receive the latest information as it becomes available. Ms. Walker cautioned against expecting daily or even weekly updates.

“The intent is to have news go out as news comes down,” Ms. Walker said. “It’s not going to be on a specific schedule because by nature, with the implementation of a major program, things happen sporadically. It might be (that some action) this week is really newsworthy and one or two messages go out, and then it might be awhile before the next message.”

Officials hope this authoritative source for NSPS news reduces the misinformation of second- or third-hand rumors.

“This way, information doesn’t get passed from person to person to person and distorted along the way,” Ms. Walker said. “We want people to know (what is happening), because if we do have a speedy implementation of this program, we don’t want people to be taken by surprise.”

In addition to the Air Force NSPS Web site and news service, the DOD NSPS Web site is a good source of information, Ms. Walker said. The Air Force Web site provides a link to the DOD site, and it is a good idea to check both places to stay well informed.

“We think this is going to be a really effective way to reach out and touch people who are interested, be they military, civilian or contractor,” Ms. Walker said.