The National Security Personnel System (NSPS) is a pay for performance pay system created in 2004-5 under authorization by Congress for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and implemented in mid-2006. NSPS replaces the General Schedule (GS) grade and step system with a pay band system intended to provide more flexibility in establishing pay levels. NSPS has differing policies concerning tenure, hiring, reassignment, promotion, collective bargaining, pay, performance measurement and recognition, etc. It purportedly retains EEO and Veterans' Preference protections although the system is too new to tell whether or not this is true.