The Foreign Service Journal, November 2007

NOV EMB E R 2 0 0 7 / F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L 59 A F S A N E W S A s yournewAFSArepresentative, I amdirectly concerned about domestic tours outside of headquarters. Commercial officers hiredafter 1994 are requiredwith- in the first sevenyears of service tobegina two-year assignment atU.S. ExportAssistance Centers. I am now serving on such an assignment at USEAC Baltimore. To com- plete my full disclosure, I barely made our flexible deadline, receiving my assignment at the end of my seventh year of service. As I have come to expect, the needs of the Service result in considerable flexibility in the “seven-year rule.” For newlyhiredofficers, the seven-year rule forUSEACassignments results inambi- guities for tenure, promotions and career planning. In a recent survey, management asked about the impact of these assignments on commissioning and tenure. The sur- vey itself was conductedby an executive-level development teamat Commerce to com- pare C&T procedures at FCS with those at the State Department and Department of Agriculture. The survey asked junior commercial officers, senior commercial officers and Commissioning and Tenure Board members about mentoring and evaluations, and also addressed domestic assignments prior to tenure among other career-path issues. The survey results indicated that SCOs and JCOs appeared to agree that mentoring had improved. SCOs said that the three-to-five-yearwindowunder current C&Tpolicy shouldnot be expanded. JCOs thought that evaluations shouldbemore standardized. C&TBoard members (only three responses) found room for improvement in the evaluation nar- ratives addressingcandidatepotential: ingeneral, thenarratives showeda“lackof courage” by raters and reviewers, andused “nuanced language” that left the boardguessing about whether to tenure JCOs. The survey didnot address the impacts of domestic assignments onpromotion (see theApril FCS “VPVoice”) or the directions for renegotiating the “seven-year rule” (see theAFSAWeb site’s FCS page for theMarch 2007 proposal). In responding to “Please indicate the number of domestic tours you believe that one should have prior to being considered forC&T,” commercial officerswere split: 14of 30 JCOs (47percent) thought one domestic tourwas appropriate and14of 34SCOs (41percent) thought one domes- tic tour appropriate. On the flip side, 16 of 30 JCOs (53 percent) would consider less than one tour acceptable, and 20 of 34 SCOs (59 percent) considered less than one tour a good idea. While the percentage differences are relatively small, they indicate that SCOs ascribe on average less importance to USEAC domestic tours for tenure, and probably for overall career path and promotion as well. One of my projects as FCS representative will be to focus on domestic assignments and the need formore clarity about tenure, USEAC tours and career paths. The recent survey shows some divergence of opinionand shared concernabout the domestic tours. We will stay in touch via AFSAnet, the Web site and future columns, and I hope to hear from commercial officers (as well as encourage them all to become AFSAmem- bers!). I would also like to survey all commercial officers and incorporate your opin- ions inappropriate and focusedquestions toasmanyof our colleagues as possible. Please let us know your reactions and any concerns so that AFSAmay better represent com- mercial officers inWashington. V.P. VOICE: FCS BY STEPHEN J. ANDERSON, FCS REPRESENTATIVE Should Commercial Officers Do Domestic Tours? Apply now for AFSA Scholarships High school seniors and college under- graduates who are children of Foreign Service employees can now apply for one- time-only Academic and Art Merit Awards and need-based Financial Aid Scholarships. Awards range from $1,500 to $3,000. The applications submission deadline is Feb. 6, 2008. Visit AFSA’s scholarshipWeb page at www.afsa.org/scholar/index.cfm for complete details, or contact Lori Dec at dec@afsa.org , or 1 (800) 704-2372, ext. 504. AmericanDiplomacy.org American Diplomacy , an Internet-based professional journal, is seeking new authors. This Webzine publishes articles of commen- tary and analysis, feature stories, Foreign Service memoirs, scholarly research of general interest, reviews of books and Internet articles, comments from readers and announcements. The target audience includes the Foreign Service community, educators, students and others interested in foreign policy and the practice of diplomacy. 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