The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2023 81 AFSA REPORT Retiree Services bers, offering the means to connect annuitants to friends and colleagues, as well as providing two dozen pages of information on Foreign Service retirement issues. John Naland (a former director of the State Depart- ment’s Office of Retirement) presented several webinars on federal benefits issues, some attracting more than 500 registrants. In addition, Dolores Brown moderated other pro- grams geared toward retirees, but of interest to all AFSA members, including “Building a Digital Brand in Foreign Affairs and Beyond,” with social media experts; “Pathways to Financial Independence: Financial Planning for the Foreign Affairs Community,” with William Carrington; and AFSPA’s Paula Jakub on the FEHB Open Season. John Naland represented AFSA on the Federal-Postal Coalition—a group of 30 organizations including Civil Service unions representing 2.7 million federal employees and 2.6 million federal retirees—which conducts advo- cacy work on federal governmentwide benefits issues. As COVID-19 travel restrictions eased during the past two years, AFSA President Eric Rubin resumed visits to regional Foreign Service retiree groups, speaking to those in Florida, Maryland/Washington, D.C., Northern Califor- nia, and Northern Virginia. He also met with retirees on outreach trips to Minnesota and North Carolina. These multifaceted efforts to provide members with value for their dues produced a rise in AFSA retiree mem- bership to its highest level in at least 10 years. U.S. Agency for International Development D uring the 2021-2023 Governing Board term, AFSA welcomed USAID Administrator Samantha Power and new political leaders. Inspired by the president’s declaration—“It is the policy of the United States to protect, empower, and rebuild the career Federal workforce”— AFSA affirmed existing relations and forged new ones with agency counterparts. AFSA’s USAID VP met regularly with the deputy administrator for management and resources; the agency T he past two years saw multiple examples of the unfortunate reality that bureaucratic glitches do not always end at retirement. In each instance, AFSA’s retirement services team stepped in to help members. Many retirees were adversely affected by the infor- mation technology “upgrades” in State Department payroll software, the Thrift Savings Plan website, and the Annuitant Employee Express website. AFSA Counselor for Retirees Dolores Brown (herself a Foreign Service retiree) worked one-on-one with more than 100 members, help- ing them to navigate the new logon procedures. She teamed up with AFSA Retiree Vice President John Naland to produce clear written guidance explaining the new procedures. That guidance was emailed to all retirees and posted on the AFSA website. In addition to tackling issues that affected all retirees, the team also assisted numerous members every month with individual concerns or questions. When appropriate, AFSA raised those individual cases with senior managers in the Office of Retirement or the Bureau of the Comptrol- ler and Global Financial Services. The team also met on a regular basis with those two offices to discuss issues affecting all Foreign Service retirees. Dolores Brown assisted the AFSA staff and Governing Board members at USAID in their efforts to improve retirement services at that agency. AFSA also continually added new or updated content to its website’s Retirement Services page. A Frequently Asked Questions section was created to share guidance on common issues. The Retirement Services section now offers more than 100 resources on federal benefits issues and post- retirement activities. They include fact sheets, videos of AFSA benefits presentations, checklists of key retirement issues, and copies of official State Department guidance. AFSA encourages members who have not visited the webpage recently to do so—what you don’t know can hurt you. In addition to online guidance, AFSA continued to email members bimonthly retirement newsletters for active-duty employees and retirees, highlighting impor- tant federal benefits topics. AFSA also continued to mail retired members the nearly 250-page annual AFSA Directory of Retired Mem-