The Foreign Service Journal, April 2010

Two important sets of pol- icy documents that deserve more attention than they’ve gotten have emerged from the Obama administration’s first year. I spotlight themhere not only because they reflect the administration’s underlying strategic vision, but because they also focus on how it should be implemented. Taken together, they offer AFSA some real opportunities. Let me explain. President BarackObama’s recent ex- ecutive order on labor-management re- lations (E.O. 13522) establishes a National Council on Federal Labor- Management Relations co-chaired by John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, and Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management & Budget. Its overarch- ing goal is to support agency partner- ships and cross-agency learning for productive labor-management relations. The executive order requires all ex- ecutive departments and agencies whose employees are represented by a labor organization to establish Labor- Management Forums. Among other things, the LMFs are tasked with de- veloping “a limited number of mission linked or process-improving perform- ance goals” and to support the changes needed to enable agencies to deliver high-quality services. A fol- low-up memo from the co- chairs lays out guidelines for establishing the forums. That brings me to the sec- ond set of blueprints, which are related to the Obama ad- ministration’s international af- fairs budget request for Fiscal Year 2011, now on Capitol Hill. The details of that submission are certainly impor- tant, but Secretary of StateHillary Rod- hamClinton’s memo of June 1, 2009, in which she set forth guidance for prepa- ration of the budget, is arguably just as significant. In that document, the Secretary em- phasizes that the budget request should be a blueprint for strategic vision, prior- ities and our means of achieving them. While we face a complex array of threats, we can meet them by using the “talent of our people, well-reasoned policies, strategic partnerships and the strength of our principles.” Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew’s companionmemo points out that tackling these challenges will require strong partnerships and institutions, as well as new thinking about how we de- velop and implement programs and op- erate at all levels. He identifies five elements that should characterize the budget: (1) goals and expected results; (2) a strategy to achieve these goals and how these align with other efforts under way: (3) the resources needed to imple- ment the strategy and how these can be leveraged with existing resources; (4) a discussion of management reforms that could improve outcomes; and (5) met- rics to assess outcomes. The budget’s number-one strategic goal is to build civilian institutional ca- pacity — not just by seeking significant increases in Foreign Service personnel, but also in terms of getting and devel- oping the right skills to meet the chal- lenges we face. Lew calls for “judicious decisions regarding the ways in which security requirements impede our abil- ity to facilitate diplomatic and assistance activities” and for improving manage- ment and oversight capacity. Taken together, these two sets of pol- icy documents offer real opportunities for AFSA to embrace the strategic vi- sion underlying the executive order, by working with OPM and OMB to estab- lish the forums and make them a more productive team effort. In the process, we can build on the historically productive partnership be- tween AFSA and the management of State and the other foreign affairs agen- cies to strengthen our institutional ca- pacity, develop the professional skills re- quired tomeet the challenges before us, and balance our security requirements with the achievement of our mission. I welcome your specific suggestions on how to use the Labor-Management Forum to achieve these goals; please send them to President@afsa.org. ■ Susan R. Johnson is the president of the American Foreign Service Association. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS Two Important Blueprints for Labor-Management Collaboration B Y S USAN R. J OHNSON A P R I L 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5