Foreign Service recruiting effort undercut by wartime demands
Many mid-level positions in hardship locations are filled by junior officers with limited experience.
The State Department's $197 million, four-year effort to recruit Foreign Service officers to hardship posts has been undercut by staffing demands in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
Since 2002, State has hired more than 1,000 new employees under its Diplomatic Readiness Initiative. The hires were intended to fill openings and provide leeway for long-term language training.
Initially GAO found the efforts were paying off, but administration priorities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Libya and monitoring of Iran and North Korea consumed the additional staff and left the department with many vacant mid-level diplomatic posts, GAO reported (GAO-06-894).
Auditors found that in order to cover the vacancies, many mid-level positions in hardship locations are filled by junior officers with limited experience. Without mid-level officers, the junior officers often turn to high-level Foreign Service personnel, including ambassadors, for managerial guidance. Time spent by these officials on management matters means less time allocated to policy.
State officials said in response to the report that their junior level officers who were given higher positions often had previous private-sector experience that provided them with management skills.
Staffing shortages also are leaving gaps in language skills, especially for hard-to-learn languages such as Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, though overall language skills are much improved. GAO said State has increased the number of positions requiring language skills by 27 percent since 2001, but for Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, still only about 60 percent of staff meet the language requirements. Overall, about 70 percent do.
In addition to increased funding, State enacted a number of new policies to entice employees to hardship posts, especially in Africa and the Middle East, where schools for children and jobs for spouses are much harder to find, and conditions are more dangerous. State offered additional pay to officers who serve extra time at the posts and required hardship service for promotion into the Senior Foreign Service.
Both GAO and the department said one of the primary hindrances to employees taking oversees posts is the lack of locality pay, which leaves them with a 17 percent gap with employees in the Washington, D.C., area. President Bush's 2007 budget included a fix to this disparity, which has not yet been adopted by Congress.
GAO recommended that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice make more use of directed assignments, under which officers are sent to posts they did not request, to fill critical positions. Commenting on the report, State officials said they would consider increased use of such assignments.
GAO also advised longer tours of duty and consecutive assignments in certain countries, especially where it would improve an officer's language skills. State officials said they are "examining our assignments system and expect to make significant changes that will address many of the concerns noted in this report."