The Pentagon wants to have at least half of its roughly 225,000 National Security Personnel System employees transferred out of the system by the end of September.

In a statement posted on the NSPS Transition Office Web site late Monday, the Pentagon did not offer details on exactly how many employees, or from which agencies, will be transitioned to the General Schedule or other systems this fiscal year. Congress last year ordered the Pentagon to have all NSPS employees out of the system by Jan. 1, 2012.

NSPS is the government's largest experiment with pay-for-performance, but Congress canceled it last year after critics charged it was too time-consuming, discriminated against minorities, and did not effectively link pay raises to employees' performance.

The Pentagon said Defense Department agencies are finalizing their expected transition dates and submitting their plans to the NSPS Transition Office for approval. Once the office approves those plans, employees will be notified of their transition dates.

The statement said human resources specialists or managers with delegated job classification authority will review an employee's assigned duties and responsibilities. If the employee came to NSPS from the GS system, he will be returned to his original grade unless his duties or classification criteria have changed, or he was originally misclassified.

If an employee's salary falls between two steps in his grade, his salary will be set at the higher step. If his salary falls below step 1 of his grade, he will be assigned to step 1.

If an employee's salary exceeds step 10, he will be placed on retained pay status. Those employees will not have their salaries reduced, but will receive halved pay raises in the future until the step 10 salary catches up with their pay level.

The Pentagon previously estimated about 4,000 employees could see their pay raises halved. But transition office director John James said in a statement to Federal Times earlier this month that the exact number won't be known until agencies and offices finish their classifications.

The NSPS office has posted a GS 101 training course on its Web site to give employees an overview of the General Schedule system and how it works.

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