The Foreign Service Journal, May 2011

F OCUS ON F ORE IGN S ERV ICE W ORK -L I FE B ALANCE C AN T ECHNOLOGY S AVE THE F OREIGN S ERVICE F AMILY ? 56 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 1 1 don’t need reading glasses, I have minimal gray hairs and wrinkles, and I have yet to see 40 candles on my birthday cake. However, when my hus- band joined the Foreign Service right out of college and moved to Karachi, and I voluntarily stayed in the States to start graduate school, our only modes of communication were letters that took between two and three weeks to ar- rive and phone calls that cost more than a dollar a minute. In those days, the mailman was my best friend and AT&T my worst enemy. We estimated that in the first year of our marriage, we could have bought a round-trip ticket to Karachi for me with the money we had spent on phone bills and postage. Today my husband is in Baghdad and my children and I are in Rabat. We “see” each other every day and “cook” and “eat” meals together. He “reads” with the kids, “helps” my daughter with her homework, “practices” piano with my son, and “kisses” us all good-night. We per- form all of these mundane activities virtually through lap- tops that move around with us from room to room whenever my hus- band has a free moment to “be” with us. And we do all of this for the cost of an Internet line we al- ready have. That experience has made me reflect on just how much our lives in the For- eign Service have been enhanced by technology during the past 19 years, and how much I’ve learned about the flexibility — and limitations — of the virtual family. FS family members have become adept at using technology to stay connected. But, given the power of these tech- nologies, applying them to the conduct of diplomatic work could produce an even greater benefit: keeping FS fami- lies together in the first place. The Virtual Life: Benefits and Limitations Years ago, when we were separated for months at a time, my husband and I would wait to discuss important issues until we were reunited. We hesitated to write let- ters or even e-mails on serious problems because we knew that a lot could get lost in the translation. Tone and body A PPLYING THE NEW COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES TO THE “ WORK ” SIDE OF THE WORK - LIFE EQUATION COULD HELP KEEP FS FAMILIES TOGETHER . B Y T ALY L IND I Taly Lind, a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, is a program officer with the USAID mission in Rabat. Her husband is the spokesman and counselor for public affairs at Embassy Baghdad.