The Foreign Service Journal, May 2006

permanent RIMC positions located at unaccompanied posts. By contrast with the IMS career, this elective is not available to those in the IMTS career. (As of this writing, Kabul does have a resident RIMC IMTS/D position.) IPO or ISO Overseas at FS-2. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of FS-2 Infor- mation Program Officer and Infor- mation SystemOfficer slots that go to equal-ranked IMTS specialists. Again, the IMTS (2882) career is different than the IMS (2880) career from the beginning of the career path up to where both get combined at the FS-2 level (2884). These differences should be taken into account when a system is devised for selection into the highest rank of service. Two Recommendations I would recommend either creation of separate Career Development Programs for IMTS and IMS personnel or, at a mini- mum, the inclusion of the following items in their CDP requirements for the Senior Foreign Service. TDY status should count. If language and community service are to be considered, so should the credits of the TDY traveler. In more than 13 years with the Foreign Service, I can conservative- ly say that I have traveled over 100 days every year. The math says I have completed the equivalent of a 3- 1 / 2 year tour. So our TDYs to differential or danger-pay posts should count. My combined TDYs to Kabul alone over the past year add up to the equivalent of a fourth of a stan- dard unaccompanied tour. Project Management. RIMCs are all about knowl- edge and project management. Technicians are heavily experienced in these areas. They perform team-leader functions on major installations or projects at least three or four times a year. This experience offers major leader- ship and supervisory on-the-job training. IMTS team leaders learn to handle great stress and pressure from the responsibility of system installations and equipment upgrades. During these projects we learn how to diplo- matically work with all customers, from FSNs and other agency directors to ambassadors. Yet that work is not counted as supervisory responsibility because the techni- cians do not write EERs. Again, the CDP’s pitfall is that it does not take into con- sideration the very different careers of the 2880 and the 2882 skill codes. We may be incestuously related in our mission and training, but from new-hire qualifications to FS-2 responsibilities we are apples and oranges. You can- not interchange a fully qualified mid-grade IMTS with a fully qualified mid-grade IMS. The CDP demands that once the IMTS reaches the FS-2 level, he or she must play major “catch up” to their IMS counterparts. But from the beginning, our career paths are separate and not equal. To lump these manda- tory and elective requirements into one CDP simply because both career paths converge at the FS-2/2884 skill code does a disservice to both skill codes. In short, this CDP is a good start, but it needs to take account of these problems to ensure an optimal future for all Information Resource Management employees. n F O C U S 40 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 The “ticket punch” list of both mandatory and elective requirements is unevenly tilted in favor of the IMS skill code.