The Foreign Service Journal, May 2006

new technology, but an acknowl- edgement of the fact that many missions are already understaffed and underfunded. Unlike our IRM specialist colleagues, who receive a 5-to-15-percent pay incentive for taking mandated training, OMSs have no financial incentive to get certified in the four mandated pro- grams in the MS Office Suite. Our “reward” for this is just to be eligi- ble for promotion to the FP-4 level. It’s important to keep up one’s skills, of course; but if we are being mandated to get certified, why don’t we also have some pay incentive as do our other specialist colleagues — at least if we get certified in MS Access, which is cur- rently an elective? It’s an unfortunate fact that many posts hardly have enough funds to meet many of their basic requirements, or even to purchase upgraded office equipment. So get- ting funding to send someone to the U.S. to take a course is not feasible for them. Moreover, OMSs are generally not informed that if they are to have any chance at all of obtaining training in Washington, funds need to be allocated in the post’s yearly budget. If the funds are not approved, this leaves the OMS with no option but to hope to get into a class sometime between assignments, on home leave or on R&R. This works fine for leadership courses, but it is not a smart option for the development and retention of computer skills. Assuming that per diem funds are available from the bureau or post, Office Management Specialists are expected to somehow fit this training into our jam- packed schedules while we’re in the U.S. during these times. For those with residences in the Washington, D.C. area, this might not present a major problem, but for those of us who call other parts of the U.S. home, such arrange- ments are problematic. If a course at FSI, for example, is only offered during a certain time and this hap- pens to be at the beginning of the R&R or home leave, much will be forgotten before the trainee gets back to post. Is this really a good use of our training funds? Is online training with Fastrac an option? Yes and no. In the first place, many of us work at posts where pay- ment of overtime is prohibitively costly. The department often functions under continuing resolutions that do not have any provision for overtime pay. In such cases, the only option is to take comp time, but at busy posts (which most are) we run the risk of losing it if we cannot take time off before the comp time earned is lost. Even if overtime pay is available, not all workspaces offer facil- ities to take such instruction during the regular workday. Working from home, or at the office in one’s “off” hours, is not always practical, either, particularly for families. Even if the employee manages to get the training, he or she still has to take the certification exam as soon as possible after taking the actual course — and pay his or her own way to Washington, D.C., or Warrenton, Va., to do it. This is the part of the Career Development Program that could be defined as an unfunded mandate. While it’s good that these two facilities accept payment vouchers for certification exams after an employee takes a course via Fastrac, it doesn’t include transportation costs. Unfortunately, the Florida Regional Center in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., does not have a certified tester; nor does it offer the 2003 version of MS Word, and possibly no other 2003 versions either. What’s even more frustrating is that there is at least the perception that newer employees coming into the corps already have these certifications. That puts them well on the way to eligibility for promotion to the FS-4 level without having to contend with all the budget, time and travel constraints the State bureaucracy puts in the way of longtime employees. Although there is a “grand- F O C U S 42 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 Elizebeth E. Veghte joined the Department of State in 1984 as a Civil Service clerk. After four years in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and nearly 10 years in the Operations Center, where she worked as the administrative assistant to the deputy director, she was accepted into the Civil Service Hard-to-Fill Program, serving from 1998 to 2003 in Bogotá and Nairobi. After those two excursion tours, she converted to the Foreign Service. Now, in her first tour following tenure, she serves as the office manager for political affairs in Tegucigalpa. She was a panelist at the OMS conference in Washington, D.C., last October. The adjustment of the OMS skill code to require certification in various Microsoft programs constitutes an unfunded mandate.