The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2019 71 AFSA NEWS OVERSEAS POST I NFO NOW AVA I LABLE TO FAMI LY MEMBERS NEWS BRIEF Adult family members under chief of mission authority now have direct access to country-specific bidding research information from the Foreign Service Institute’s Overseas Briefing Center. OBC’s country information, previously available only on its Post Info to Go website at http://fsitraining.state . gov/pitg, is now available (after registration) from home computers and mobile devices. With this change, family members no longer must rely on the employee’s access to State’s intranet. Post Info to Go offers nearly 6,000 documents from 265 posts around the world, with an additional 1,900 Per- sonal Post Insights describing life at various posts, submitted anonymously by members of the Foreign Service community. Documents for each post include childcare and schooling information, resources for EFM employment, hous- ing information, pet import and quarantine restrictions and more. OBC also offers financial and legal resources, tips for international moves, and webinars and online training resources. To request account authorization, send an email from a personal—not a business—email account to PostInfoToGoExternal@state.gov. Use the subject line: “[LAST NAME]: Request Account Authorization for Post Info to Go External.” In the body of the email, list full name, current post, agency and the name of the employee sponsor with sponsor’s government email address. The sponsor must be a direct-hire employee of a U.S. government agency posted to, or heading to, a U.S. embassy or consulate overseas. n FSJ Wins 2019 Excel Award The Foreign Service Journal won a bronze medal in the “Editorial/Opin- ion Piece” category at the Association Media & Publishing 2019 Excel Awards gala on June 24 for an article written by Ambassador (ret.) Ted Osius. His article, “Respect, Trust and Partnership: Keep- ing Diplomacy on Course in Troubling Times,” appeared in the April 2018 FSJ . Following is an excerpt from Amb. Osius’ article: The challenges to the Foreign Service, and to our democracy, are existential. Some who remain at State feel besieged and demoralized. Yet I urge those Foreign Service officers who believe in making a difference to remain, if possible, because it is still a privilege to serve our country. I continue to believe the experienced diplomat’s language, regional expertise and deep understanding of a global chal- lenge will pay off, and give that individual the chance to change a bit of history. For those who choose to remain and who love diplomacy as I do, I offer a few thoughts on what can be done to best serve the United States, even in difficult times. I learned in my last three posts—India, Indonesia and Vietnam—about the power of respect, trust and partnership. The United States casts a long shadow, and when we show respect it has a big impact. Showing respect means figuring out what is really, truly important to our partners and taking that seriously. It costs America almost nothing and gets us almost everything. Showing respect builds trust. Real, pow- erful partnership comes when you build trust. And you build trust by finding where interests converge, and then doing things together. The diplomat’s job is to find those shared interests and make them the bases of our actions. All those cables, all that contact work, the outreach—all of it should lead to action. After retiring from the Foreign Service in 2017, Ambassador Osius served as vice president of Fulbright University Vietnam and as a senior adviser at the Albright-Stonebridge Group. In February he joined Google as vice president for government affairs and public policy in the Asia-Pacific. He served as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam from 2014 to 2017. His Foreign Service assignments included Indonesia, India, Thailand, Japan, the Vatican and the Philippines, and he worked on Asian challenges from the White House, the United Nations and the State Department. Congratulations to The Foreign Service Journal and Amb. Osius. n