The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

for ways to expand USAID’s presence in the developing world. Instead, the administration’s total OE request for FY 2008 was 15 percent lower than the FY 2006 actual budget for OE. Budgetary and management decisions such as these that lead to the overcentralization of USAID’s strategic planning and pro- grammanagement processes will compromise aid effectiveness by moving strategic decision points from the field to head- quarters. The staffing situation is also critical, as the number of USAID direct hires has decreased substantially over the last 15 years, causing a troubling loss of technical expertise at the agency. In the 1990s, for instance, 37 percent of the agency’s work force left without being replaced, or were laid off in the 1995 reduction-in-force. The number of FSOs working overseas dropped by 29 per- cent between 1992 and 2005, from 1,173 to 833. The current attrition rate is outpacing new hires by more than 2-to-1. In 2006, 65 FSOs retired while only 29 were hired, and about half of all FSOs have been recruited in the last six or seven years. Even when new officers are hired, it takes two years to fully train them for entry-level jobs. The result is that the work force increasingly lacks institutional memory and technical knowl- edge. Because of the ever-shrinking size of USAID’s staff, the agency has been forced to manage an increasingly large port- folio with fewer and fewer personnel. For instance, while the average federal contracting officer manages around $10 mil- lion in contracts per year, a USAID contracting officer over- sees an average of $57 million in contracts. As overseas mis- sions get smaller, the system’smanagement and oversight capa- bilities will become overstressed. The operating expense constraints at USAID have also led to a proliferation of personnel systems at the agency. Up to 13 different personnel systems have operated between 2001 and 2005, many of them designed to cir- cumvent OE and human resources restrictions. The agency tried to address this several years ago by con- solidating many positions into the existing Foreign Service Limited hiring mechanism, using program funding. The FSLmechanism is normally a way to staff positions overseas with Civil Service officers on an exceptional basis when qualified Foreign Service officers are not available. However, this only exacerbated and distorted the FS career sys- tem, causing more problems and concerns for regular FS employees. On a positive note, both houses of Congress are support- ing our call to increase OE. It is our hope that by the time this column is published, the administration will have concurred. It is the only logical and sensible solution left to correct years of neglect. We hope that the administration will finally pro- vide adequate funding for USAID to carry out the nation’s for- eign assistance programs, which, after all, are our most cost- effective and best first line of defense. OC T OB E R 2 0 0 7 / F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L 67 A F S A N E W S The staffing situation is also critical, as the number of USAID direct hires has decreased substantially over the last 15 years.