The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

model to account for post-9/11 changes in workloads and procedures, so that the U.S. can truly have both “safe bor- ders and open doors.” A Distance to Go 6. State has to find a way to staff hardship posts ade- quately, using directed assignments if necessary in order to assure Service discipline. 7. State has some distance to go before it reaps the full benefit of its new IT systems. The SMART system is almost a year behind schedule, albeit for good reasons. More formal training of users is needed and a cadre of IT coaches (today’s secretaries?) should be developed to help overseas users. A common computerized accounting and control application is still being developed: the Joint [State-USAID] Financial Management System (JFMS). It is overdue. 8. “Right-sizing” — aligning the U.S. government presence abroad to reflect our national priorities and to attain policy objectives as efficiently as possible — has barely begun. It should be pursued in multiple venues: interagency capital cost-sharing for overseas buildings; wider use of “virtual posts;” conscious use of MPPs and, with White House support, the BPP senior reviews to manage the overseas presence of all U.S. agencies; com- pletion of State’s regional support center program; and ISO 9000 certification for all overseas administrative operations that have “critical mass.” 9. Future Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries must engage fully in management and leadership processes as well as in con- gressional relations. 10. Finally, Congress and the executive branch have a series of management issues they need to examine togeth- er, including: the long-term relationship between State, USAID and other U.S. assistance vehicles (e.g., Millennium Challenge, U.S. Global AIDS program), and where in the budget and the appropriations structure it is most appropriate to fund State and USAID (perhaps merged under a separate “national security account”). n F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21