Letters

Robert Goldenkoff is right on with his Viewpoint article, "Rethinking Career Resilience" (October). Organizations don't do work, people do. I perceive an unhealthy trend toward hiring workers as temporaries, or private individual contractors who work one project and then move on. It's unhealthy for employer and employee, and runs counter to the teamwork concept integral to improving productivity.

Treating employees as contingency workers the employer realizes a short-term gain by minimizing people cost, but loses the imagination and creativity that comes with long-term associations. (How often did Lockheed's Kelly Johnson turn over the engineers in his "Skunk Works" design section?) The employee loses the security that comes with group benefits and the stimulus of long-term associations. It's OK in baseball to bring in a relief pitcher to pitch to one batter. However, the management usually doesn't encourage the pitcher to change his uniform and go over to the other team the next inning.

Government's best asset, and biggest investment, is its people. Providing for job security, as Mr. Goldenkoff defines it, must be part of any reengineering project.

Jim Neff
Broadcast Management Officer
Army Broadcasting Service
Alexandria, Va.

MEAN-SPIRITED COVERAGE

I notice what seems to be a change in editorial direction or policy. I've been reading Government Executive for many years. It's always well-researched, well-edited, informative and without noticeable obvious editorializing in the news sections.

The November Executive Memo seems to depart from the editorializing part of my experience. For example, what is the point of the "Not So Stealthy" piece? It condemns by innuendo, as opposed to fact or example, the Department of Defense for not being forthcoming "about a few other things." What is the purpose of this piece? What message did you intend for the reader? Was it humor?

"'Best Kept Secrets' Stay That Way" is of the same ilk. It is mean-spirited and without substance.

I get enough vacuous meanness from TV, the newspapers and other media. If Government Executive sinks to becoming just another player in that arena, it will lose credibility among an audience (government executives) that is trying hard to do a good job against incredible odds. When you help me keep informed, you help me. When you impose yet another opinion in a sea of opinions, you lose me.

Cliff Bernath
Office of the Secretary of Defense

FLEXTIME A JOKE AT JUSTICE

Your article "All Worked Up" (November) paints too rosy a picture of the workplace flexibility at the Justice Department. Although the alternate work schedule (AWS) was instituted in the Civil Rights Division its has yet to allow flextime. When I asked about its availability, I was informed that I could go on flextime with the permission of my supervisor. However, what is meant is actually an alternate starting time. Instead of beginning my work day at 9:00 I could start each day at 8:30. After explaining the concept of flextime, i.e., core hours, the employee deciding each day what time to begin his workday, etc., I was told that this was not permitted. A number of supervisors have claimed they could not manage their sections under such unmanageable circumstances. So although flexiplace and AWS are now offered, we're still waiting for flextime. At least until more competent managers are hired.

James S. Adams Jr.
Program Analyst
Justice Department

EPA IS ON TOP OF IT

Thank you for providing needed exposure on the importance of product reuse ("Beyond Recycling: The Push to Reduce Waste," October Executive Memo). As your article pointed out, households and businesses could be saving money, diverting significant discards from disposal, and contributing to local enterprise and job development by reducing and reusing their unwanted waste.

However, the article implied that the Environmental Protection Agency was unaware of these benefits until it commissioned our study. This is not so. The EPA's Municipal and Industrial Solid Waste Division (MISWD) supported our work to ensure that these benefits and replicable model reuse practices were documented and publicized effectively.

In fact, long before commissioning our study, MISWD had been advancing the reduce, reuse "mantra" through a number of projects, including the National Recycling Coalition's Source Reduction Forum, source reduction procurement fact sheets, a paperless office campaign guide, programs to measure source reduction, reuse workshops, summarizing state source reduction activities, and unit pricing, to name a few. Also, the economic benefits of waste reduction have been extremely clear to MISWD as evidenced by its Jobs Through Recycling Initiative, now entering its fourth year.

Brenda A. Platt
Director, Materials Recovery
Institute for Local Self-Reliance

ABROAD VIEW

I was distressed by the lead of the article "Anxiety Abroad" (September) and by the suggestion we are going through some kind of latter-day McCarthyism, and that we in the State Department have gone back on promises made in the 1970s that officers could expect ambassadorships. Having been in the service for 37 years, I can promise that there was no such promise when I joined, nor was there such a promise in the 1970s. The Foreign Service, like the military services, has been an up-or-out system, at least since the Foreign Service Act of 1946.

There is, of course, anxiety in the Foreign Service as the State Department, like other departments, undergoes the trauma of downsizing and streamlining. We in management are consequently faced with many difficult decisions about the appropriate size of the Foreign Service, the distribution of officers across a 10-grade structure, and the appropriate mechanism for recruiting a workforce which, as the Foreign Service Act of 1980 requires, is representative of America.

Finally, I think it is unfortunate that you base your article so heavily on the views of one American Foreign Service officer about the politicization of the service. I have served nine presidents in several politically contentious regions of the world: Central America, the Persian Gulf and South Asia. I have defended U.S. policy loyally, but have always felt free to express divergent points of view.

On a statistical note, I would point out that hiring of Foreign Service officers in fiscal 1996 will be 127, and not 90, and that the total number of Foreign Service officers is 761 and not 661.

Anthony C. E. Quainton
Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Personnel
State Department

"Anxiety Abroad" was right on the mark. It failed, however, to recognize the degree to which the Foreign Service has aided and abetted its own demise.

As early as (if not before) 1972, when the Nixon Administration devalued the dollar in explicit recognition of the critical role of economics in our foreign and domestic policy, Foreign Service leaders should have recognized the need to build up and support our economic and commercial presence overseas. Instead, they turned their backs on such declasse pursuits as supporting American exports in pursuit of illusory political/military benefits. They even had the commercial function transferred to Commerce, creating a new bureaucracy and overseas empire.

The Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall crumbled, yet the department continues to recruit train and assign political officers as it has since 1945.

The reason there are so many "foreign services" today from USIA, AID, Commerce, Agriculture, Treasury and more is because we forgot who and what we were supposed to be: The Foreign Service of the United States, not the political service of the State Department.

Robert H. Stern
Retired Foreign Service officer
Chantilly, Va.

Having served as a career Foreign Service officer under two ambassadors-a political appointee (Ed Ney, Canada, 1990-1991) and a career ambassador (Mark Hambley, Saudi Arabia, 1993)-let me say that the politician-career dichotomy is an overstated issue that bears little relation to the systemic problems of the Foreign Service. Whether an ambassador is an appointee or an old hand in the Middle East is less relevant than the fact that all ambassadors are subordinated to a management and regulatory system untouched by major government reforms in the last 50 years. Foreign affairs agencies are partially exempt from the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act, are virtually never subject to independent audits, and, until recently, not under FBI jurisdiction overseas.

The hidden Foreign Service issue is the problem of the CIA and other intelligence activities occupying space at many diplomatic establishments. The situation is actually an intensification of the Cold War with "spook" staff now growing while diplomat staff declines. Spooks treat embassies as personal turf, demanding assistance on a priority basis. Worse for the Foreign Service image, the public mistakes U.S. embassy spooks for diplomats if a private citizen tangles with one of our colorful action men.

The last problem is that of ideological imbalance. While the Foreign Service is selected on the basis of merit (except for the persons who come in under the racial preference system), the traditional outreach approach was to recruit from bicoastal colleges having a strong radical/left culture. Since Americans are committed to traditional values, the presence of a highly concentrated liberal Foreign Service corps is an anomaly. Worse, the problem is not being corrected by the misguided "diversity" effort which still recruits liberals, taking into account gender and race rather than the Ivy League/limousine classes.

Timothy N. Hunter
Washington correspondent
State Department Watch

IT: JUST ANOTHER RESOURCE

Government Executive's articles on IT strategies and investments (September and October) seem to give IT investments a unique status. IT products, services and projects should be considered just another resource that an organization uses in support of its mission. Give no special status to IT projects, but have them compete for an organization's limited resources with all the other projects that impact its future. Capital investment methodologies can be used for ranking the various projects. Since there is no "bottom line" to mission-driven organizations in government, peer review and management selection would pick the projects. Both IT and non-IT projects would be selected based on their impact on the organization.

Stuart H. Breil
Ridgecrest, Calif.