The Foreign Service Journal, January 2011

After decades of discus- sion and little action, it is high time for the Department of State and our other civilian foreign affairs agencies to es- tablish a Foreign Service “ready reserve” composed of qualified retirees — and pos- sibly former Foreign Service person- nel with 10 years or more of experi- ence. We simply can no longer afford to deprive ourselves of skills and expe- rience readily available to us. AFSA has long advocated a cen- trally managed and operated program to use our retirees to fill temporary staffing gaps for two reasons. First, such a system would be more trans- parent and less susceptible to crony- ism than the current When Actually Employed system, which each State bureau runs on its own. A unified pro- gram would also cut administrative costs by centralizing, computerizing and streamlining the hiring process. We should give this program a name that describes its function and purpose precisely and accurately: the Foreign Service Reserve Corps. The current “When Actually Employed” designation is a largely incomprehen- sible bureaucratic term. Few outside the Department of State have a clue what “WAE” means, and fewer still are inspired by it. The WAE issue has come up in the context of the staffing gaps at the Depart- ment of State and the U.S. Agency for International De- velopment that I have ad- dressed in previous columns. A recent briefing on the scope of the mid-level staffing gap at State and the tools available to manage it — as well as some of the responses to my Nov. 23 message to members about the Quad- rennial Diplomacy and Development Review, in which I recommended using retirees to address the mid-level expe- rience gap — inspires me to return to the issue. I have heard from many retirees who have served repeatedly on WAE assignments overseas and are now being dropped from the rolls for cost reasons, and from others who have signed up but never been called. There is a broad perception that the way the WAE program is set up and managed distributes opportunities to those best known to bureau executive directors and post management officers. As one retired FSO noted in a thoughtful memo, a Foreign Service Ready Reserve corps could fill vacant positions on a short- or longer-term temporary basis, or meet sudden un- anticipated needs. It could provide able and experienced workers at a fraction of the cost of alternative ap- proaches. There would be no need to fund retirement and health insurance costs; moreover, retirees can be paid less than they were making at retire- ment — so long as they do not forgo their annuity — when called to active duty. A small unit in the Bureau of Human Resources — perhaps called the Human Resources Ready Reserve Office — could be set up to adminis- ter the program. This unit would maintain a skills bank with a comput- erized profile of all retirees who regis- ter for the program and handle the necessary paperwork. It would cover the payroll costs of reserve personnel through a Working Capital Fund that could bill each bureau for the funds expended on its behalf. The office could also work with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Office of Medical Services to simplify processes for keeping security and medical clearances up to date. All branches of our military main- tain reserve or National Guard com- ponents, as outlined in Title 10, Subtitle E. Their purpose is clearly spelled out in the legislation: “to pro- vide trained units and qualified per- sons available for active duty at such time as national security may re- quire.” Our civilian foreign affairs agencies need a similar reserve ca- pacity, and now is the time to make it happen. ■ Susan R. Johnson is the president of the American Foreign Service Association. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS Time for the Foreign Service Reserve Corps B Y S USAN R. J OHNSON J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5