The Foreign Service Journal, May 2006

at post. As a mid-level IMSer going to post as the IMO, I did not need to certify in anything. So I placed more emphasis on being able to keep basic infrastructure running than on explaining to a user why his or her Hotmail inbox opens slowly on some days. No Need for Boot Camp Don’t get me wrong: I did man- age to learn something at SAIT and FSI, but mostly on my own time, with some few and far-between ded- icated instructors, and by studying the textbooks. And yes, it is great to be a Microsoft Certified Systems En- gineer — but not at the expense of being able to keep an embassy’s day- to-day operations running smoothly. As it is, we are sending folks out to their first Foreign Service assign- ments who have “paper MCSEs” but cannot even rebuild our production servers (Cable Express, etc.). Even worse, some of their more experi- enced colleagues at post lack those basic skills, as well. It appears to me that the only ones really benefiting from this are the contractors who provide the instructors coaching us to study the test questions. There is something to be said about the time it takes to really mas- ter an operating system or applica- tion. In private industry, IT profes- sionals have two types of training. One is the boot-camp approach and the other is the university or commu- nity-college approach. The boot camps get people “certified.” The universities and colleges educate and train people methodically. Our agency is set up for boot- camp training, in my opinion, which does our organization little good. Instead of concentrating on passing tests, SAIT needs to get its entry- level students to focus on mastering the corporate work environment they will encounter when they get to post. There should be well-thought- out, structured courses that will pre- pare students to perform real-world IRM operations at any size embassy in the world. State Department programs such as Global Information Management Technology have helped to standard- ize the IRM infrastructure at many embassies around the world. Taking advantage of that fact, small, embassy- like production centers — as much as possible like an embassy — should be built at SAIT and FSI, and the new IMSers should be trained on these mock-ups. After all, FSI already does this for its “Congen Rosslyn” training, going as far as hav- ing a mock jail where new consular officers role-play visiting prisoners. In that spirit, I would like to see the training for IRM professionals tailored to the real-life needs of the career track. Can you imagine being sent to your first post and walking into an Information Processing Center to see something nearly iden- tical to what you encountered in training? I know I’d be really happy, and would definitely feel more confi- dent in my ability to do my job. Do programs such as FASTRAC, really, practically, prepare someone for work in an embassy? To me, it just sounds like a bunch of “ticket punching” to get up to the next level. Once we pass the exam, we have lit- tle incentive to retain much of what we learned in an online testing envi- ronment, much less practice the things daily. I suspect that many IRM profes- sionals leave the Service after one or two tours, having acquired their IT certifications and marketable work experience at U.S. government expense! Instead of wasting resources on such opportunists, we need to attract individuals who will familiarize themselves with State’s systems and procedures — not prepare themselves to go to work for the IT departments of General Motors, ExxonMobil, etc. Surely there must be a large pool of people out there who are already “cer- tified” to work in those jobs. 20 Questions Here are some questions I would like all information management personnel to consider, along with my answers: How many Information Manage- ment Specialists are there who can rebuild a Cable Express server, some- thing they should all be capable of doing? Not as many as there should be. Often there is an army of con- tractors only too happy to bill hun- dreds of dollars per hour to help us with simple tasks that we ought to be expected to know. How many IRM personnel are totally reliant on expert contractors back in Washington to help them repair systems? Far too many. Does the current training regimen really give the U.S. taxpayer as much return on investment as it could? No, especially with all the per diem SAIT spends on “paper” MCSEs. Does our current training fit with 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 6 S P E A K I N G O U T u Programs such as Global Information Management Technology have helped to standardize the IRM infrastructure at many embassies.