How is the NSSC Doing?

As a NASA manager I am greatly disturbed and shocked by this action. Surely, it must be a joke. There is no way the NSSC could hire the right people for me. I don't know about other mangers, but the people I hire must have skills necessary to carry out the mission of NASA and I work very, very closly with the center personnel department to get that done. I have seen resumes that could fool anybody who didn't know what they were doing and I don't want to even bother looking at those. My personnel office only gives me three people to choose from so I must have three top people, otherwise I am done for. I'm too busy to worry about this so my personnel people do that for me.

I've had complaints from my employees on retirement questions, a detailee from another center who can't get resolution on a move, a new employee who never got calls returned when trying to move, and I've even given up trying to find out why I was paid ~ $300 less on a travel voucher. I just decided I didn't have time to waste with people who can't answer simple questions or return my many, many phone calls on the subject.

This will be a nightmare that we can't afford. I still hope it is a joke.

In my dealings with NSSC, their performance has not been stellar to this point. However, they are a new organization that needs to work out the kinks in some areas. It would make sense that they concentrate on the functions they currently perform, become expert in those areas and then explore options to take on new functions. NASA can't expect supervisors and employees to continue working with the additional burden that dealing with the NSSC is causing. At our Center, employees still come to the functional experts because they often cannot get the service they need from the NSSC. I have no problem giving them a chance to get their act together. That would have been nice before functions transitioned.

If additional options are explored, the Centers should have the opportunity to fully understand what the impacts are going to be before we once again take reductions in FTE and contractor WYs, while we must continue to provide service that the NSSC will not or can not. In the past, we didn't fully understand the implications because they weren't worked out in advance. Now the Centers must live with that everyday. Employees, supervisors and the functional owners are frustrated.

I'm glad we're no longer being told that the NSSC is meant to save money. Considering the Centers must pay the NSSC for their services and continue to support those same services, it is apparent that there is no cost savings at this point.

NASA HR Directors - I hope you are listening to your staff about their current experiences with the NSSC. Staffing is a key function. If this function moved to NSSC, the Centers will suffer.

You must be kidding! My office mate didn't have insurance when these people lost his paperwork. He didn't know until his wife went to the doctor. I went to a retirement party last week and the retiree said he didn't know if he was going to get paid or not. He said that everybody was nice when they finally called him back, but they didn't know what forms to fill out or what some of the forms were he asked about. Also, he said he was left wondering what questions he should have asked since they only answered specific questions like robots. He was directed to websites and got as much information there as he could, but feels he probably missed something very important. What a way to leave an agency you worked for the past 30 years.
I don't know much about hiring, since I'm a GS-13, but this is scary.
How much are we paying for these people?

If NSSC was not created to save money, then what was the logic? This is the first I've heard that. My center is struggling to make sure we have work and people for future missions and now I hear that we are spending money that could have stayed here for less service and more hassle. As a taxpayer, I'm dismayed. As an employee, I'm outraged.

I don't mind giving the NSSC time to get better. Afterall, haven't they only been in business for 3 to 4 years? However,the cost in resources and customer service appears steep.

I agree with one of the other writers, they need to get better before they go out and try to get more. That is not logical and could really hurt the agency even more. I looked at their website and it shows they have green metrics and everybody knows that is extremely unlikely. You can make metrics tell you whatever you want to tell, so it most likely a farce.

I hope the center directors are not agreeing to reducing services to benefit NSSC. Why is Mike Griffin doing this?

I have been very unimpressed by the NSSC's ability to follow through with their assigned responsibilities. It seems like they are more concerned with closing out items than truly providing the level of support our employees need. Given that fact, how on earth are they going to be able to take on a strategic function like staffing? For us to be successful in our mission, we have to be able to hire the best and brightest. My HR office works very closely with us and their advice and counsel is invaluable. If we give staffing to an organziation that is metric driven instead of service driven, we'll be unable to get the critical skills we need. This is ridiculous!

Those NASA managers and hiring officials who are troubled about moving the staffing function to NSSC need to let NASA's top executives (e.g., Mike Griffin, Shana Dale) know their concerns. They are the ones who have the last say on the matter and can do something to stop it from happening. Also, let Griffin and Dale know about the problems/poor customer service received from NSSC. I also thought that the whole idea for establishing NSSC was to save money AND improve service. It appears that neither is happening. NSSC must clearly prove it can do both before they are given more work to do.

This has to be a joke because the NSSC is a joke. They can't answer the simplest questions and always have to elevate it to the next level. While they are in the process of elevating it to the next level, they close the ticket and you get this nice e-mail stating your problem has been resolved--yeah right. This is how they are green on their metrics, it is big lie. Since they can't get the transactional things right can we really expect them to be able to handle staffing? We need to make sure that NASA's top executives are clued into this joke of an idea. While they are stopping this from transitioning, they ought to look at the the rest of their services and investigate the fudged green metrics.

First, a fact - I am not an NSSC employee; Second, another fact - What a sad group of whiners the previous posters are.

The NSSC is just over 2 years old and has done a remarkable job in their short history. Are they perfect? No. Are/were the Centers perfect? No. The shared services model is an industry-proven method to standardize services and reduce costs in an organization's non-core functions. The NSSC's customers are surveyed annually by a INDEPENDENT firm that is a recognized leader in their field and these results are widely distributed. The rate of satisfied customers so far indicates that the previous dissatisfied posters are in a lower single digit minority and of course the satisfied customers don't post here. They are not motivated by another agenda.

Remember what NASA's mission is - launching rockets and space exploration - not protecting jobs at the Centers. The NSSC is saving money but not as much as it should, and you know why? Because the Centers continue to "reassign" and keep people on the payroll long after their functional jobs have transitioned to the NSSC. With a relatively flat budget the past few years, NASA cannot fulfill their mission while the Centers continue to allow fiefdoms and empires for HR, Procurement and Finance purely to justify some SES's paper shuffling career. Those administrative jobs have transitioned to the NSSC - GET OVER IT and move on. If you can't adjust, then do yourself and the Agency a favor: RESIGN. I'm sure the NSSC will be very helpful in providing assistance to get you off the payroll. Better yet, take some of the advice provided by one the previous rocket scientists (pun intended); pick up the phone and call Shana or Mike and tell them they have made a mistake and you are recommending a shutdown of the NSSC. Please let us all know how that works for you.

You're welcome.

Whiners? I'm sure you won't whine, Dave, when they somehow cancel your health insurance like they did my roommate (and she found out while in the hospital emergency room or screw up your retirement paperwork like they did another employee in my division.

As a C.O. each and every month I have to explain to them yet again, how to handle invoices that have been delegated for payment. Seems the help they have there doesn't stay very long when they find out they can get paid more at the nearby casinos for a lot less stressfull working condition.

Frankly, I am not happy with our HR department at GRC, but I have never heard of them accidently cancelling someone's health insurance. And at least they answered retirement questions in a timely manner.

Hiring the right person is crucial to the NASA Mission. That needs to be said first and kept on the forefront of this whole discussion. The person who had this bright idea must be someone who is clueless about the "real world" of staffing. Staffing is not black and white, there is no script that can be memorized and read back to a caller. When my organization has had to hire a person with a specialized skill I know there has been collaboration between myself, my HRR AND the staffing office. Yes there may be small parts that can be done remotely, but does it really benefit THE MISSION? I don't belive so, how can it when all you are doing is adding more people that touch the hiring action before it gets done, requiring more time and resources. This sounds like the childhood game where a secret is passed around, what it started out is not what the last person in the line hears.
One of the many funny parts on this flow chart is NSSC getting an SME for a hire that may require it,,,where is the SME? As far as I know a Subject Matter Expert is located at the center where that hire is needed. More than a flow chart it looks like a pile up in the fog on an eight lane highway.

Dave - I think you've missed the point. What people are expressing here is frustration with customer service at the NSSC. I don't think anyone talked about saving jobs at the Centers or that the shared services model doesn't work. Personally, I think it can work. I just have issue with how the model has been implemented at NASA to this point. If we are going to hand functions over the to the NSSC, let's hand them over. There are some areas where pieces of a function have been transitioned. The Centers were told that the function was going and to reduce the staff that were performing those functions. Most of the Centers did just that and now have pieces of functions to perform and no one to perform them. They are left scrambling to get the job done. NSSC is young and I know what the statistics say. I also know the real time feedback I get from real people and my own personal experiences from working with the NSSC. We all know that everyone has metrics that they gather. What I am hearing here is that people are feeling like they are being treated like a metric, not a person with an issue they need help with.

As a retired NASA employee and someone who was in on the thought process that led to the NSSC's creation, I am disappointed in reading the negative comments. However, Dave's post is generally on the mark, except for the admonition to other posters. We did conceive of the NSSC to save money and provide excellent service to those smaller centers where retention of technical and scientific personnel could be enabled by reducing the number of administrative personnel. At the larger, more robust centers, we recognized that the NSSC would probably do a good job on the "back-office" functions but would not provide the level of personalized service many managers desire. Retention of subject matter experts at the centers was designed to provide that personalized service. And, yes, there are always pro's and con's to adopting the service center model. Just keep in mind that the reduction in administrative FTEs allows retention of more scientific and engineering personnel.

Mal and Dave, have you called the NSSC to evaluate the sorry state of service for yourself? Benefits expertise is essentially unavailable based on the four calls I've made in the last 6 months. For example, ask a question like "What can you tell me about FERS supplemental retirement payments?" The telephone clerk will read you paragraph from a government bulletin. Tell the clerk you would like to know if you're still eligible if you accept an early out and you take a second job. The clerk will say that someone will call you back. In two weeks you will get a call back from Mavis. Mavis will say "Um, I think you're eligible. Why don't you call Social Security and see what they say? Sorry, that's all I know"

Every call is like this.