Civilian-personnel system ‘not cutting it’ Published June 4, 2003 By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- The civilian-personnel system in the Defense Department "is not cutting it," said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on June 3.Rumsfeld, who spoke at the National Press Club, said that the department is handcuffed by its reliance on an antiquated personnel system. He called today's civilian-personnel system "an industrial-age organization struggling to perform in an information-age world."DOD officials have proposed changes to the system designed to make it more flexible and responsive, Rumsfeld said."The system for recruiting, retaining (and) managing the federal workforce on the civilian side is clearly not working well," he said.President George W. Bush has proposed the creation of a new national security personnel system that would be merit-based. It would give the department more flexibility and agility as to how it manages the roughly 700,000 civilians in DOD, who account for more than one-third of the federal workforce.Managers cannot use this resource effectively, given the current rules, Rumsfeld said. He pointed to the flexibility Congress gave managers in the new Department of Homeland Security as an example.Besides the Homeland Security example, Rumsfeld would like to capitalize on the more than two decades worth of pilot projects the department has sponsored to increase workplace flexibility and reward top-notch employees."The task of fighting the global war on terrorism certainly forces us to recognize that the time has come to bring those same kind of innovative practices to the work of the Department of Defense," he said.Part of the reform package would allow DOD officials to turn over about 320,000 jobs now being performed by military people to civil-service or contractor employees."This is 2.5 times the number of troops in Iraq when Baghdad fell," he said.Managers use servicemembers in these jobs because it is easier than navigating the civil-service bureaucracy. He said these 320,000 servicemembers in civilian jobs is an unnecessary strain on uniformed troops. He said it is not right, especially when DOD officials are calling up the Reserve components and invoking the Stop-Loss program.It is also demoralizing for civilian employees, Rumsfeld said. DOD civilians want their skills to be used in a crisis, but this does not happen because of the outdated rules that make it difficult to move people."For example in Operation Iraqi Freedom, 83 percent of civilians in theater were contractors," he said. "Only 17 percent were civilian federal workers. The complex web of rules and regulations prevents us from moving DOD civilians to new tasks quickly. So managers turn to military or contractors instead of civil-service civilians."DOD officials also have a problem hiring new workers. He said private firms can size up a prospect at a job fair and offer them the job immediately."When DOD (officials interview) the same people, all we can do is offer them a ream of paperwork and promise to get back to them in three to five months," he said. "It should not be surprising that the most talented folks end up working someplace other than the DOD."The bureaucracy manifests itself in strange ways. DOD officials must deal with more than a thousand local unions. The secretary said one example of the inefficiency of this is with abuse of government credit cards."With military personnel, we can garnish their wages and recover the stolen funds," he said. "Not so with civilian personnel. In fact, DOD (officials have) been negotiating now for more than two years with more than 1,300 separate union locals for the right to garnish wages of those who use government credit cards for personal purchases -- and we still have 30 more unions to go."Rumsfeld's proposed changes would allow department officials to negotiate with national offices instead of locals.