The Foreign Service Journal, March 2011

32 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 1 1 L ast year was a busy one for AFSA. From re- vising core precepts to addressing airline fees for families, we have worked closely with the State Department on a multitude of issues all year long. January The year began with a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti that took a quarter of a million lives — among them those of Foreign Service member Victoria DeLong, the wife and children of Andy Wyllie, and more than a dozen locally employed staff of Embassy Port-au-Prince. AFSA worked with the department to help evacuees to Wash- ington with medical, personal and professional issues, de- velop an appropriate memorial; and, later, to seek more standardized procedures for dealing with the death of FS members abroad. We urged the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations to prioritize obtaining earthquake- resistant housing for all posts in earthquake zones, a goal that OBO has substantially advanced toward this year. Throughout the 2009-2010 evaluation cycle, we pro- vided the Bureau of Human Resources with summaries of member critiques on e-performance and monitoring im- provement of the program. The large number of com- plaints and problems encountered convinced the department to delay mandatory implementation of e-per- formance overseas. AFSA began working with the department to revise the core precepts for promotion, ensuring that they ap- plied equally to Foreign Service members of all cones and specialties, both domestically and overseas. This in- cludes recognizing that many FS jobs involve technical rather than political skills; that dealing with state and local counterparts in the U.S. requires similar skills to dealing with foreign counterparts; that supervisors should en- courage required training; and that avoidance of a hostile work environment is an integral responsibility of man- agement. We also conducted our annual survey of AFSAmember opinion, which provided us a better picture of the compo- sition of our membership, your opinions on issues already known to us, as well as dozens of other issues communi- cated through the survey’s comments section. February AFSA met with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security to discuss clearance investigations in Canada. Because Cana- dian law prohibits foreign agencies from conducting back- ground investigations in that country, DS was asking FS members who had lived or worked there to sign makeshift release forms granting the Canadian government carte blanche to investigate them. The bureau agreed to de- velop an official form that would limit the investigation in scope and time, restricting it to items required by the Se- curity Policy Board’s Uniform Investigative Standards for a security clearance. We also convinced the Foreign Service Institute to in- clude English As a Second Language among the online courses available to Eligible Family Members. March We continued our ongoing efforts to eliminate the 15- year time-in-class limit for FS-4 couriers. While couriers do have opportunities for promotion to the mid-level and senior ranks when they reach FS-3, the structure of the skill code means they have minimal opportunities for over- coming that first crucial hurdle. We noted a discrepancy in the Foreign Affairs Manual preventing rest-and-recuperation leave to employees ar- riving at post outside the normal transfer season. The de- partment corrected this discrepancy. We also obtained an agreement from the department to confer certificates signed by the Secretary of State to all specialists upon their attainment of tenure as career mem- bers of the Foreign Service. April AFSA reported a change in DS policy with regard to Law Enforcement Availability Pay suspension for DS agents. Discussions revealed that the bureau was not fol- lowing existing Foreign Affairs Manual procedures for de- certifying special agents and lacked standard operating procedures for recertifying them — issues closely linked to LEAP. We are now discussing a draft of such an SOP. We negotiated the procedural precepts governing the way the promotion boards operate and issues requiring special consideration. We inserted language to reduce bias ANNUAL REPORT American Foreign Service Association 2010 State Department: A Year of Accomplishments ■ B Y D ANIEL H IRSCH , AFSA S TATE D EPARTMENT VP