The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

Secretary of State Colin Powell had remarkable success in 2001 and 2002 convincing the White House and Congress to provide additional resources for staffing, information tech- nology, and facilities. If, later this year, Congress approves the president’s Fiscal Year 2004 budget at the request- ed level, then the Foreign Service (at least at State) will have finally overcome the legacy of the 1990s budget cuts that dangerously eroded our nation’s diplo- matic readiness. While it will take several more years for promotions to refill the hollowed- out middle ranks and for modern infor- mation technology to be fully deployed, we may soon face the happy prospect of having all the physical tools that we need to do our vital jobs. But it takes more than people, technology and facil- ities to conduct diplomacy. The Foreign Service also needs the skills, outlooks and organization required to carry out its mission. Skills: Full staffing and modern facilities will not sharply improve the effectiveness of an office if its personnel do not also have the technical, manage- rial, and foreign language skills needed to do their jobs. The StateDepartment, with strong support from AFSA, has taken a good first step on the profes- sional skills front by making the com- pletion of leadership and management training a prerequisite for promotion effective in 2006. But much more needs to be done. For example, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer expressed concern to me on the eve of the Iraq War that the sum total of training in multilateral diplomacy available to U.S. diplomats is one three-day course that is given just twice a year. Elsewhere, I would hazard a guess that fewer than half of all tenured employees have had training in basic negotiating skills. More language training could be given to employees at the 3/3 level of proficien- cy whose next assignments will require them to give public speeches or press interviews. More computer training could be given to employees who do not knowhow to take full advantage of word processing and e-mail software. And a strong case can be made that everyone should attend training on the care and feeding of Congress. Outlooks: All the training and equipment in the world will not improve the efficiency of an employee who finishes drafting a “must-go” mem- orandum or telegram at noon only to have to wait around until 7 p.m. for his or her supervisor to begin to review it. While mandatory leadership and man- agement training should lessen this problem, much work remains to be done to get some of our colleagues to act more efficiently and with more of a sense of urgency. Organization: Even two years into the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative hiring boom, I still hear from employees who are working impossible hours in understaffed offices. As AFSA pointed out in tes- timony submitted to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees in April, the world has changed con- siderably since the DRI hiring tar- gets were set three years ago. This makes it vital for State to update its workforce planning to identify new staffing needs that the Congress can then provide resources to address. The Foreign Service has gotten stronger over the past two years, but much work remains to be done. As always, AFSA will continue to work to make the Foreign Service a better sup- ported, more respected, andmore satis- fying place in which to spend a career. This, in turn, serves to make the Foreign Service a more effective agent of U.S. international leadership. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS What Next? B Y J OHN K. N ALAND M A Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5 John K. Naland is the president of the American Foreign Service Association. AFSA continues to work to make the Foreign Service a better supported, more respected, and more satisfying place in which to spend a career.