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Return to Article: Officials call for dramatic boost in State Department staff

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  I faced mandatory retirement at age 65, Foreign Service Act of 1980, since amended, on July 31, 2007. I was re-hired on March 12, 2008 as a WAE & NEA/SA is my Sponsoring Bureau. When funds become available I expect I will be assigned overseas for a maximum of 6 months in a calendar year and subject to the Dept's Office of Medical Services clearing me for the assignment. Thus State has this reservoir of qualified former Foreign Service Officers but it lacks the funds to utilize their skills. I hope funding will be forthcoming. Cheers!

  ALEX C. FLEMING Posted July 23, 2008 12:21 PM
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  From what I have seen with the application and hiring process, the State Department is not interested in talented, dedicated workers. They screen out anyone who doesn't fit a narrow focus of "qualifications," so they can't expect anyone to believe that they can't fill positions.

  Andy Posted July 22, 2008 8:52 AM
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  The State Department DOES NOT need more taxpayer funding for their staff to fill job vacancies overseas and to provide current employees with language and diplomacy training. State should only be hiring employees with the skills they need. This is how Uncle Sam wastes taxpayers dollars. Fire the managers at State that are not managing with their current resource levels. In fact, when the government was furloughed a few years ago, no one even noticed any impact to the taxpayer on services that the State Department provided at home and overseas. There should be massive cuts in the overseas Diplomatic core.

  frank Posted July 22, 2008 7:33 AM
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  What State needs is a term limit on employment so that more people can serve. There are millions of Americans qualified to do those jobs and not allowed opportunity because the federal employees want 20+ years. We need a five year term limit to allow more people to serve. The training can train anyone from nothing to an FSO.

  The training issue is there because they want the Department of Peace free school for federal employees. They also want to say they are uniquely qualified when anyone can do those jobs.

  DSW Posted July 21, 2008 6:08 PM
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  To follow up with EG's comments, I think you are right on the money. Thanks for what you said.

  Betty Small Posted July 18, 2008 5:44 PM
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  I would like to welcome the foreign service staff to the wonderful world that acquisition professionals are in. As stated, there are those who are so fed up with the "state of affairs" that they are leaving, thereby exacerbating the staffing and expertise problem.

  Tired Posted July 18, 2008 12:49 PM
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  Doesn't State continually receive a "GREEN" rating on the Executive Branch Management Scorecard for Human Resource excellence! Check OMB reports dating back at least five years and you will find the same identification of lack of language qualifications for FS overseas staff. Everyone seems to know the problem, but solutions seem lacking. Where is the accoutability?

  Retired Fed Posted July 18, 2008 11:29 AM
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  How does that happen boost the number of employees ans you have 12% vacancies over seas? What that says is stationing people overseas is not a priority and there are too many stateside. The oversea positions should be States' number 1 priority and stateside assignments should be filled last. Can you see the military saying we need 5 brigades in Afghanistan but we won't send troops because we need lots of guys for parades, this is just hogwash

  Dan ketter Posted July 18, 2008 11:20 AM
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  1. How did unqualified people get in and pass the referral process? perhaps the HR program is lacking.

  2. Is it really that surprising under the idea " do more with less" that we awake to learn we are behind>

  Don't blame 1 man for this, it takes a committe to mess up like this. We call them CONGRESS> Totally out of touch with the citizenry, the isues, and what's really going on in the world.

  EG Posted July 18, 2008 9:51 AM
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  I'm confident there are a lot of very hard working and dedicated staff at the State Department. If it is run anything like a large agency I once worked for, they probably have at least 20% dead weight they could get rid of. I have found managers do not take responsibility for their employees poor or little performance. My experience at the agency I worked for was in the case of poor performers, they just hired more people and simply ignored the poor performers.

  Donna Posted July 18, 2008 9:39 AM
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  Actually, if they were good at managing their current budget, they could do more with less. They have already added hundreds of new positions without the need for any approvals. Maybe if they took some of the folks spending their days peeking at other people's passport files and made them do some real work, they would get more done.

  Frank Mills Posted July 18, 2008 8:27 AM
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  I was a State civil servant from 1991-2000 and then did three Foreign Service tours (Hanoi, Vientiane, and PRT/Helmand Province, Afghanistan) from 2000-2006 under a "limited non-career FS appointment."

  Re. language, my experience suggested that for very hard languages, even completing the designated language training does not mean that an FSO will be able to communicate adequately on a professional level in the host country language. Simply focusing on the number of "language unqualified" FSOs at a post misses the point. There are also serious issues regarding the quality of the training, but obviously it's much easier to focus on the numbers. For example, among the 14-15 FSOs who completed the Vietnamese language training in 2000-2001, only a couple were really able to use the language professionally, even though nearly all received the 3/3 qualification.

  As for the officer shortage, State can be its own worst enemy. I applied to convert to the career FS following the end of my third overseas tour. Despite three tours in hardship posts (including one in a war zone), three performance awards, and four letters of recommendation from career ambassadors, State's human resources bureau concluded that I was "unqualified" to be a mid level political or management officer. That ties in nicely with Mr. Naland's assertion in the article that "19 percent" of FSOs are unqualified for their current postions.

  Ironically, another federal entity concluded that I was sufficiently qualified for its SES candidate program.

  Dave Wise Posted July 18, 2008 8:01 AM