The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

84 JULY-AUGUST 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA REPORT When progress stalled, President Rubin sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to request his assistance in resolving long-standing payroll issues. This outreach led to the Secretary’s written commitment to correct payroll errors within 90 days and to provide interest on back pay. In March 2023, AFSA again engaged with USDA lead- ership to address concerns related to SFS pay. At the time of writing, AFSA is working with FAS to establish a fair and transparent approach to SFS pay within USDA’s executive pay structure. Additional changes may follow during CBA renegotiations. More broadly, AFSA continues to hold HR accountable for paying FSOs on time and correctly and understand- ing the unique complexities of the Foreign Service from an HR standpoint, and welcomes FAS’ effective process improvements. AFSA also focused on two key linked issues affecting the long-term health of FAS’ Foreign Service: FSO flow- through and morale and retention. In July 2022, AFSA published a detailed report from its morale and retention survey, which outlined FSO concerns ranging from leadership accountability and an untenable administrative burden to not feeling valued, both individually and as a Foreign Service. The report led to continued engagement with FAS leadership on how to address employee concerns. In November 2022, AFSA published an analytical piece, A Sustainable Path to 180 FSOs . This report advocates thoughtful rebuilding of the FAS Foreign Service, which is currently recovering from decades of attrition and related challenges. AFSA also developed an accompanying tool that allows the user to map out how promotion rates, FSO intake, and other decisions affect our FS through 2030, and will update it in advance of promotion and assign- ment cycles to reinforce key recommendations. Finally, in March 2022, AFSA requested that Congress increase its appropriation to FAS, which would help expand and provide better resources to overseas offices and bolster headquarters support. AFSA also sought an increased allocation of two-year funds, increasing flexibil- ity for programming throughout the fiscal year. Through these strategic engagements with USDA, FAS, and Congress during the Governing Board term, AFSA took important steps to address FSO concerns and strengthen our Service, ensuring that FSOs remained engaged and informed. U.S. Agency for Global Media T he small but influential Foreign Service com- ponent of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (formerly the Broadcasting Board of Gover- nors) is bracing for a return to the existential challenges it faced under former director Amanda Bennett, who left the role in 2020 but was con- firmed for another three-year term in September 2022. USAGM Representative Steve Herman, Voice of Amer- ica’s White House bureau chief, speaks for career foreign correspondents of the VOA, as well as supervisors and engineers at isolated overseas sites that provide short- wave, mediumwave and FM broadcast transmissions for Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Sawa. When Bennett was director of VOA, she made clear her desire to remove VOA correspondents from the For- eign Service, believing erroneously that FS membership denoted State Department influence, or the appearance thereof, over the journalists. AFSA has held intermittent discussions with USAGM management to attempt to clarify the broadcast- ing agency’s stance on the future of Foreign Service journalists, both for the VOA correspondents and the USAGM technical staff who serve in some of the most remote locations for any members of the U.S. Foreign Service. In December 2022, AFSA USAGM Representative Steve Herman was suspended from Twitter for follow- ing the development of ElonJet, a Twitter account that tracked the private jet locations of new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, which is public information. AFSA released a state- ment calling for the reinstatement of Herman’s account, asserting that he was exercising his right to free speech and diligence as a journalist. The VOA Foreign Service dates back to when the broadcaster was under the U.S. Information Agency, which was dissolved in 1999 and its broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created BBG. n