Foreign Service officers push for more discipline

Foreign Service officers are pushing for more discipline and better training in their elite corps. In a first step at reforming the 75-year-old Foreign Service, the American Foreign Service Association has asked the State Department to be tougher on officers who don't want to serve abroad, make it harder for officers to attain tenure and adopt higher standards for entry to the Senior Foreign Service. The association also wants more required training for Foreign Service officers, a re-evaluation of the service's core values and better pay for its members. "The Foreign Service was created in 1924 as a leading group of uniquely qualified people who submit themselves to unique burdens of service," said association President John Naland. He added: "With those burdens, we do get some benefits. Like the military, for example, we can retire after 20 years of service. In recent years, because of budget cuts and staffing cuts, some of that uniqueness of the Foreign Service has been eroded. Unless we restore that uniqueness, eventually someone's going to come along and start taking away some of the benefits. We want to act now to say, 'Yes, we are a unique organization that can do unique things for the President and the Secretary of State.'" The association's push to tighten discipline and reform the Foreign Service comes as Congress is approving a 13.5 percent budget increase for the State Department, thanks mainly to the efforts of Secretary of State Colin Powell. The budget increase will be used partly to beef up the ranks of the Service by 360 new officers in 2002, the first stage in a three-year effort to hire 1,100 new employees. Foreign Service officers must be willing to serve anywhere in the world during their careers. But the association is concerned about a small but growing number of officers who don't honor that commitment. Many decline because of medical reasons of their own or of family members. "When people are told, 'You need to go to country x,' in a small but troubling number of cases the response has been, 'Well, no I can't for reason a, b, c or d,'" Naland said. "There's a belief in recent years there's been somewhat less discipline." The association wants the State Department to grant fewer exceptions and exemptions for overseas tours of duty to Foreign Service officers. Foreign Service officers who no longer want to commit to worldwide availability should be able to easily convert to the civil service, the association said. The association is also concerned that Foreign Service Commissioning and Tenure Boards are denying tenure to fewer officers. In recent years, the boards denied tenure to fewer than 1 percent of officers, down from an average of 5 percent a year in the past. Limited hiring in the 1990s may be responsible for the change, Naland said. "During the mid-1990s, hiring was almost stopped. There may have been a subconscious decision that since we can hardly hire anyone, we shouldn't be separating many either, because that would make it even worse. Now with hiring turning around, thanks to Secretary Powell, hopefully we can go back to the previous averages," Naland said. The association's other proposals include:

• Continuing the effort to hire more Foreign Service officers.
• Requiring additional training courses before employees can transfer to new positions. For example, employees transferring to supervisory positions would first have to take a course in supervisory skills.
• Changing the culture of the Foreign Service away from the culture of risk aversion, inward focus and hierarchical centralization that worked during the Cold War but doesn't work now.
• Conducting a study of total Foreign Service compensation in comparison to civil service and military compensation.
• Paying a 5 percent differential to overseas employees whose spouses cannot find employment.