The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2023

34 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL an advocate for the Foreign Service as an institution—are both warranted and valuable. AFSA’s Role as the Voice of the Foreign Service Nearly 80 percent of all active-duty Foreign Service members join AFSA (above 80 percent for USAID!), in addition to thou- sands of retired members. AFSA helps with virtually any issue its members confront—security clearances or violations, denial of tenure, employment-related performance evaluation, discipline/ selection-out, pet travel, divorce, career counseling, and equal employment opportunity (EEO) and disciplinary processes. At USAID, AFSA also counsels members on the agency’s still-new promotions process, work-life balance, pregnancy, divorce, adoptions, curtailments, extensions, assignments, allowances, evacuations, leave and benefits issues, and so on—the life of an FSO is not simple! Foreign Service members need a union, and AFSA is proud to represent them. AFSA’s role as “the voice of the Foreign Service” remains criti- cal at USAID, where the influence and authorities of the Foreign Service have severely declined. Though USAID remains a foreign affairs agency, it no longer operates or staffs itself as an institu- tion led by and centered on its Foreign Service. There are many reasons for this: the proliferation of Washington-driven initia- tives; communications advancements extending the long arm of a predominantly non-FS Washington bureaucracy farther and faster afield; and the failure to define and support FS career pathways. At USAID, the Foreign Service is too often treated simply as one among the agency’s many “hiring mechanisms,” with leadership failing to invest in FSOs as career public servants—and to be very clear, the Foreign Service is designed as a career service. Incen- tives matter, and USAID does not offer the appropriate career motivations needed to overcome the financial costs associated with a Washington, D.C., tour. The agency often claims that FSOs aren’t “stepping up” to bid on Washington jobs, but at the same time, it limits or rejects extensions to Washington tours for FSOs— in large part because of a chronic FSO shortage. And, unlike State, USAID does not place senior FSOs in key operational and management positions such as head of the Management Bureau, assistant to the Administrator for human capital and talent man- agement (HCTM), or chief human capital officer (CHCO). The net result is a USAID headquarters where not only career General Service (GS) and career FS employees are the minority in many bureaus, but the technical expertise, field perspective, and hard-won mission experience of FSOs are too often either dismissed or simply drowned out. This diminishes the USAID Foreign Service as an institution. The proximate cause for this is USAID’s long-standing lack of strategic workforce planning coupled with its outdated bifurcated budget structure. As reported in the May 2022 OIG report, “Strategic Work- force Planning: Challenges Impair USAID’s Ability to Establish a Comprehensive Human Capital Approach,” USAID has worked for decades “to improve the efficiency and efficacy of its strategic workforce planning, yet despite these attempts, human capital management has remained one of the Agency’s top challenges.” The agency is addicted to bureaucratic workarounds; it has consistently failed to invest authority, money, and staff in HCTM; and its budget complexities are coupled with sometimes opaque and questionable practices favoring non-career mechanisms. AFSA, USAID, and Labor Dilution Decades of hiring workarounds and the agency’s patchwork, fragmented, and seemingly ad hoc approach to strategic work- force planning have diluted USAID’s career employee workforce, complicating operations, management, and agency-union rela- tions. USAID employs thousands of colleagues in Washington, D.C., and around the world, under temporary appointments and limited-term contracts including Foreign Service Limited (FSL) appointments, personal service contracts (PSCs), institutional support contracts (ISCs), or other time-limited mechanisms. As career employees shrink in proportion within the overall agency workforce, so too has the “voice” of the Foreign Service within USAID and the strength of AFSA and other federal unions repre- senting career public servants. And so I welcomed the Biden-Harris administration’s focus on career public servants, including Executive Order 14003’s declaration: “It is the policy of the United States to protect, empower, and rebuild the career Federal workforce.” The presi- dent describes that workforce as “providing the expertise and experience necessary for the critical functioning of the Federal Government.” Rebuilding the career workforce at USAID is long overdue but, as the president affirms, critical. Though USAID remains a foreign affairs agency, it no longer operates or staffs itself as an institution led by and centered on its Foreign Service.