The Foreign Service Journal, September 2015

44 SEPTEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL many others. Indeed, even political officers will need some specialized training if they are to analyze technological trends, communications issues, etc. Changes should be made to accomplish this type of recruit- ment. The lateral entry and excursion tour programs should be used more creatively, and more attention should be given to permitting personnel to change career ladders within the For- eign Service and Civil Service systems. To some Foreign Service members, this may sound like heresy, since entry into the Service has traditionally been by examination. Nonetheless, unless the Foreign Service is willing to meet the new challenges of foreign policy creatively, the problems that have plagued the Service in the past will destroy it in the future. Senior Foreign Service Also vital to career development is the use of out-of-cone assignments. If cones are used as straitjackets, to confine an individual’s skills and expertise or to restrict groups of senior jobs, the Foreign Service as a whole will be the loser. In a promotion system, competition within cones may be easier to accommodate than competition within ranks without regard to functional categories, but both are now used in the Service. Changing tradition is never easy; but if, as many believe, the survival of the Service depends upon it, changes must be made. The culmination of successful career development is entry into the Senior Foreign Service. Though the act created the SFS and requires development of substantive and manage- ment skills and expertise to help reach it, the criteria for entry into the senior ranks have not yet been developed. This adds to the uncertainty that a new system inherently produces. The act seeks to encourage senior officers to achieve high levels of performance through increased opportunities to serve in posi- tions of high trust and responsibility, increased competition, rapid advancement to the senior ranks and the opportunity for extended service so long as standards of excellence are maintained. The act conceived of the SFS as a means to ensure that only the most capable individuals are promoted into the higher ranks through the creation of a new, rigorous senior threshold performance review process. Entrance into and promotion and retention within the SFS is intended to be governed by selec- tion boards in the same manner as in the Foreign Service as a whole. Those not promoted would thus receive early warning, giving them time to make other plans. But until the new per- formance review process is developed, members of the Service have no way of judging whether the Senior Foreign Service will be the dynamic corps it was envisioned to be. In addition to an effective career development program, a barometer of the vitality of any institution is its system of rewarding exceptional performance and its ability to support performance of duties. The system of incentives, allowances and benefits provided under the act is intended to provide these rewards and overall support equitably, yet they must be adequately funded and applied within the Service and among the agencies. Requirements for “Maximum Compatibility” Ultimately, all the benefits, employee policies and programs discussed above will be tied together in a united system com- prising all five foreign affairs agencies. The act’s requirements in Sections 203–205 for maximum compatibility among the administrative agencies of the Service were not only designed to promote efficiency. Implemented effectively, these provi- sions will promote the flexibility necessary to the work of the Service by removing bureaucratic obstacles. Especially overseas, they will also prevent the fragmentation that hurts implementation of policy. In the final analysis, only if the Foreign Service’s purposes, functions and needs are viewed as a whole, and the necessary changes made imaginatively, will the Foreign Service Act of 1980 pave the way for fundamental changes in the Service and the foreign affairs agencies. For instance, the Foreign Service Institute cannot develop training courses in the absence of a joint management-labor vision of what career development patterns should be. Junior and mid-career development pat- terns cannot be drawn in the absence of a known model for the character and operation of the Senior Foreign Service. Finally, the most beautifully designed career pattern is meaningless if the morale of the individual employee is neglected because of an uncertain system of allowances and benefits and the lack of effective and consolidated administra- tion among the Service’s parent agencies. The Foreign Service of the next century will only be a dynamic reality when the myriad pieces of the jigsaw puzzle designed by the Foreign Service Act of 1980 are finally fitting together. — Virginia M. Schlundt In 1982, Virginia M. Schlundt was staff director of the House Com- mittee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on International Opera- tions. She was the principal aide to committee chairman Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.), floor manager of the bill that became the Foreign Service Act of 1980.