The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

While our child is still in school, we expect to serve in countries that meet her educational needs. Once she leaves home, I expect to serve any- where I am needed,” says first-tour officer Lisa Swenarski de Herrara, from Jeddah. (Note: After Lisa responded to the survey, her post went on ordered departure, and she faces separation from her family.) Many employees, especially single ones, expressed a sense of inequality in how worldwide availability is inter- preted and implemented. Here are a few of these comments: “How can I say no to an unaccom- panied assignment when I agreed to worldwide availability as part of the employment agreement?” a female management officer writes from a Latin American post. “I don’t think the majority of FS employees are really worldwide available. At best, single officers and specialists without great connections are worldwide available,” says a male consular officer in the Middle East. “Worldwide availability means I am willing to serve wherever the gov- ernment feels my skills can best be utilized,” says Mike Snyder. “All incoming FS employees should be worldwide available. Unfortunately, I don’t think some officers have fully digested what worldwide availability means when they enter the Service, or feel their particular situations or skills somehow exclude them from true worldwide availability.” “If there is a requirement to be worldwide available, then it should be a hard-and-fast requirement,” says a married economic officer. “Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case. … It is widely believed that if you know how to ‘work the system’ you can avoid doing a hardship tour. Tying promo- tions to hardship service could fix this.” “Worldwide availability means worldwide availability,” says a man- agement officer. “The department sends out plenty of cables saying they will make directed assignments, but why am I here in Lagos with a dozen JOs and no middle management offi- cers? The downside of refusing to enforce our stated policy stares us in the face every day in Lagos.” “I think anyone joining the Service should be worldwide avail- able, including family members. Otherwise, the rest of us are required to fill in at places we may not want to go,” says a single, female economic officer. “I don’t understand when I hear the talk about equity and hardship tours and then see people who have served three European tours in a row. If the department is serious about people serving periodic hard- ship tours, the policy should be enforced across the board,” says a single, female officer heading to Asia. “I have no problem for FSOs to say they won’t go to certain posts because of family reasons, but those that do go to those posts should be better rewarded,” says a single, male economic officer heading to Asia. “Worldwide availability must be taken literally,” says single public diplomacy officer Danna Brennan, from Dhaka. “The department is quite soft on this issue, in my opin- ion. Worldwide availability means that your family concerns should have little effect on the assignment 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 4 If the FS wants to retain the greater number of women it has brought in, it is going to have to do better to accommodate the demands of women employees who are also mothers. Use Our Skills New Entry Professionals were hired by USAID for their advanced technical skills, analytical and creative abilities, and interpersonal communication facility. … Once we started working in our first and second tours overseas, however, we found that the actual work involves almost no technical knowledge, and no creativity or real analytical skills. We spend all of our days writing and review- ing bureaucratic documents to obligate small amounts of money into contracts, and probably less than 10 percent of our time thinking about what's good for the development of the country where we work. It appeared to me initially that I was in the right place for me, once I got to know my new-hire colleagues during ori- entation and shortly thereafter. Since then, now that I have worked in USAID missions for a few years, I question nearly every day why a person whose fortes are in creativity and analysis and cross-cultural communication spends his entire working day inside his office writing tedious memos and participating in boring meetings about bureaucratic issues only with other Americans. Only because I hope that the situation will improve over time — as I move up the career ladder or into smaller missions — do I remain on this career path. — USAID new entry professional