The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

M A Y 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 53 For full results and charts, please visit www.afsa.org/state/. Thanks to all who participated. The survey was not limited tomulti- ple-choice questions. Respondents pro- vided 1,212 freeform comments con- cerning ways that training-related func- tions or processes could be improved (a question asked at the request of the Gov- ernment Accountability Office) and 1,058 comments detailing additional problems or concerns they believeAFSA should be addressing, as well as several hundred additional comments. Repre- sentative comments are shown in italics below. Overall Response: Good Representation of State’s Demographics Altogether, AFSA received 2,725 re- sponses by the cutoff date of March 1. We heard from members of every skill group and in numbers matching the overall composition of the State De- partment Foreign Service, with gener- alists, especially at the middle ranks, making up 63 percent of the respon- dents. More than three-quarters of re- spondents are serving overseas. Sixty-three percent are married, 3 percent reside with an unmarried part- ner, 29 percent have a household that includes children, 16 percent have a for- eign-born spouse or partner, and 10 percent are part of a tandem couple. Eighty-eight percent are worldwide available. Twenty-two percent have medical limitations on themselves or a household member; 4 percent have children with special needs; and 1 per- cent identified themselves as having a disability. Most respondents (nearly 80 per- cent) have served in a hardship-dif- ferental post (see chart below). Bidding Decisions: Regional Interest, Post Management and Family Considerations Are Most Important Factors By far, the most important consid- erations affecting respondents’ bidding decisions are: the inherent interest of a position or region (95 percent); the quality of post management (94 per- cent); the importance of the position in a post or office (84 percent); and the post/position’s value for career en- hancement (83 percent). These consid- erations are closely followed by financial issues, danger, social/recreational con- siderations, housing options and degree of hardship. For married respondents the results were similar, except that the ability to bring family to post ranked as the high- est consideration, tied with the inherent interest of a position or region. Quality and availability of educational facilities are also important factors for families. Assignments: Fairness OK, But Transparency Needs Improvement Overall, 60 percent of respondents are satisfied with the fairness of the as- signments process, but far fewer (26 per- cent) are satisfied with its transparency. For a breakdown of specialists’ and gen- eralists’ responses, please refer to the AFSAWeb site. AFSA should explore how to restruc- ture the bidding and assignments process into a more transparently competitive process (i.e., some sort of point system that is somewhat similar to the career devel- opment checklist), with less reliance on personal relationships and “corridor rep- utation,” a term that automatically trans- lates into “cronyism” and “the Good Ol’ Boy” system. When it comes to assignment sup- port from career development officers, generalists are the most satisfied (69 percent), but results vary depending on specialist area. Professional Training: Most (But Not All) Are Satisfied More than two-thirds of generalists and a little more than half of specialists are satisfied with the availability of pro- fessional training. However, there is a dip in satisfaction levels among office management specialists (only 36 per- cent). Most respondents are also satis- fied with the quality of professional training. For both generalist and specialist re- sults, see Chart 11 at www.afsa.org/state/. A F S A N E W S Survey • Continued from page 51 Continued on page 56