Civilian Personnel Administration: The Time Has Come for a New Paradigm.

摘要

There continues to exist a paradigm within the majority of the Department of Defense (DoD) civilian personnel community that Civilian Personnel Offices (CPOs) cannot be consolidated without significant loss of customer service and that CPOs cannot effectively provide civilian personnel servicing to employees and managers of other Military Departments or Defense Agencies. It is obvious that the DoD is no longer the growth industry that it was in the 1980's. The question is, can the DoD continue to afford the luxury and overhead of civilian personnel staffs at headquarters and subordinated headquarters throughout the DoD and of the numerous CPOs, sometimes collocated, in the midst of a declining management structure and a shrinking civilian work force. The author believes the answer is 'no ' Jointness is the future for DoD. It is time for the Army to form a new paradigm for civilian personnel administration. That new paradigm should accept reality as well as avoid parochialism, and is two-fold. It should be based on the acceptance that consolidation is absolutely necessary, not just within Army, but across DoD. No less important, it should stress jointness over uniqueness in the development of guidelines for streamlining and simplifying the personnel system.