U.S.DEPARTMENT OF STATE APRIL 2009 Micronesia: Micro Mission Macro Service APRIL09 STATE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 5 3 3 12 24 38 State’s Post of the By the Cleaner Slate Month Numbers The Department promotes Micronesia: Diverse 2008 Foreign Service responsible environmental cultures populate this promotion statistics. stewardship. small island country. SPECIAL SECTION 42 A Dog’s Life 22 Educational Exercises FEATURES COLUMNS 10 32 2 From the D.G. Double Teaming Office Of The Month 3 In the News Though little used, job-sharing Policy, Planning and Resources shows potential. assesses public diplomacy’s impact. 9 Diversity Notes 43 State of the Arts 22 36 44 Safety Scene The Next Level Breaking Barriers 46 Obituaries Embassy participates in major Volunteers in Tokyo practice 47 Retirements crisis simulation. person-to-person diplomacy. 48 The Last Word ON THE COVER 30 42 This tiny island sits in Micronesia’s Catalog Shopping Dog Tale Chuuk Lagoon, a base for the Overseas Buildings Operations Local guards in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Japanese fleet in World War II. helps furnish overseas offices. save newborn puppies. Photograph by Getty Images D.G. HARRY K. THOMAS Office of Resource Management And Organizational Analysis How are promotion numbers for the Department’s need for additional positions. Foreign Service determined? How do we Here, the work of Resource Management know how many new positions to request and Organizational Analysis and the Bureau from Congress? By what means do we man- of Resource Management’s Office of Budget age the more than 20,000 Foreign and Civil Planning is vital. Their detailed joint analysis Service positions in the United States and underpins decisions made by senior manage- overseas? HR’s Office of Resource Manage- ment and the Secretary and makes the case. ment and Organizational Analysis answers I think that almost all of you are already these questions, and more. aware that, in spite of repeated requests Led by Phil Lussier, the office is charged by the Administration from fiscal year with three principal functions: work force 2004 on for funding for new Department planning, position management, and com- positions, we received no increase (except pensation and FS classification. While these for consular and security) until the Depart- issues are somewhat technical, they relate ment of Defense Emergency Supplemental directly to issues that affect you personally. Appropriations Act for FY 2008 appropriated To begin, some of you will ask what funds for 138 positions. We have requested “work force planning” actually is and what funding to hire nearly 1,500 additional FS it means for the Department. Fair question. and CS positions for FY 2009, and we know In essence, RMA analyzes complex data and the Administration stands strongly behind makes recommendations about how many this request. We hope Congress will support employees, with which skills and abilities, it, as well. make in these areas. The applicable laws and the Department will need in the near and Looking at the budget from a different regulations are very complicated, and we long term. The Department’s mission and angle, RMA works with RM/BP to ensure are lucky in having some real experts whose goals, as defined by the Secretary, inform the Department does not exceed the funding advice helps me make the best and most the process. available for hiring and paying employees. In informed decisions possible. RMA also provides senior management this role, I hope bureaus see RMA more as a Last but not least, RMA is responsible for with a wide variety of interpretative studies “good cop” than a “bad cop.” RMA goes out determining the proper grade for every FS that help us manage Foreign and Civil of its way to cooperate and find solutions for position overseas. Until last year, there had Service employees in a more informed way. bureaus to meet their HR needs. not been a thorough review of grades tied to RMA worked closely, for instance, with Ca- With regard to its third mandate, RMA is conal/skill responsibilities for more than 20 reer Development and Assignments and my directly responsible for the bread and butter years. RMA has begun such a review, and a office in planning for the FS mid-level posi- issues of calculating how much FS, CS, number of overseas employees have met with tion freezes we were compelled to institute Senior Foreign Service and Senior Executive RMA representatives as they visited posts to for the 2008 and 2009 FS assignment cycles Service employees are paid. It ensures that conduct the requisite surveys. due to our serious staffing shortage. It also these groups are compensated accurately, We anticipate that this project will be analyzes attrition, advancement and hiring as required by law, including by our Senior completed this year and will result in some data so that it can advise me on the numbers Pay for Performance system. RMA also changes in position ranks overseas. In most to be allotted to each FS Selection Board. originates the annual CS and FS wallet-sized cases, changes will be incremental, will be More broadly, RMA prepares an annual pay cards, which show the salary levels for made in advance of the next assignment report on the Department’s future need for each grade and step and have been popular season and will not affect incumbents. CS and FS supervisory positions. I use this to with employees. In HR, we want to serve you efficiently ensure that our hiring plans have adequate RMA handles other compensation and well. If you want to learn more about employees to fill these jobs. issues that affect most of you. Questions RMA, please visit: http://hrweb.hr.state.gov/ One of the biggest management chal- concerning overtime pay, premium pay caps prd/hrweb/rma/Index.cfm. lenges facing the Department each year is and comp time for travel, for instance, are If you have any general comments or explaining and defending to the Office of initially routed to this office. It makes recom- suggestions, please feel free to send them to Management and Budget and Congress the mendations to me about what decisions to me via unclassified e-mail at DG Direct.n 2 State APRIL 2009 news Restoring Tree Lines in Managua As posts celebrate Earth Day this month, Speaking at the ceremony, Ambassador inexpensive tools to combat global warming. many will plant trees, often in projects that Trivelli said Nicaragua has the highest The reforestation project was initiated engage the host nation. However, the U.S. levels of deforestation in Central America. by Kevyn Wightman, an American forestry Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua, may have The country lost nearly 20 percent of its expert resident in Nicaragua who worked as set the tree-planting standard—last June it forests between 1990 and 2005, largely landscape consultant for the construction of planted more than 4,500 trees involving 15 due to the expansion of its livestock and the embassy’s new compound. native species. agricultural frontier. In addition, Hurricane The 4,500 trees were planted across the The embassy’s reforestation effort Felix destroyed nearly 1.5 million hectares of largely treeless sides of an extinct volcano began with a ceremony involving then- Atlantic rainforest in September 2007. near the 63-acre site of the new embassy. Ambassador Paul Trivelli, Managua’s Vice Nonetheless, he stressed, Nicaragua Over the years, these areas had been burned, Mayor Felipe Neri Leiva Orochena and harbors tremendous biodiversity, including pastured and even mined for rock, leaving Nicaragua’s Vice Minister for the Environ- more than 2,000 species of trees—trees that the soil degraded and vulnerable to erosion. ment Roberto Araquistain. The ceremony are key to ecological and economic land However, trees grow quickly in the tropics, roughly coincided with the United Nations’ restoration. Reforestation with native tree and a grass known as the “the soil nail” for World Environment Day and the launch of species provides such environmental benefits its ability to hold soil in place was planted Nicaragua’s National Reforestation Crusade. as animal habitat, watershed protection and across the land’s contours. The new trees The city of Managua’s municipal nursery erosion control. Trees also remove carbon symbolize shelter, persistence, renewal, donated 2,000 trees for the event. dioxide from the air, which makes them wisdom and hope. APRIL 2009 State 3 news Department Achieves CFC Goal The Department has meet its goal of raising $2.195 million for the 17 percent over its goal—and it raised $119,210. Several bureaus will 2008 Combined Federal Campaign, according to Shelly Kornegay, the get the President’s Award from the organization running the regional Department’s campaign coordinator. campaign. Among those receiving the award, given for achieving As of February, Department employees had given $2,195,973. This 75 percent employee participation or a $275 per capita gift, are the reflected a 21 percent participation rate, about the same as that of the bureaus of Population, Refugees and Migration; and East Asian and 2007 campaign. The 3,745 donors gave an average of $586 per person; Pacific Affairs. they were able to direct donations The Department’s campaign did well in an otherwise economically to one or more of approximately down year because some bureaus had active campaign coordinators, 4,000 charities. Kornegay said, pointing in particular to Frances O. Waller, a first-time The Department also met the coordinator in the Bureau of Administration. target in the 2007 campaign. The “She just went above and beyond in her efforts,” Kornegay said. Department met its goal even after Waller, who handles Foreign Service staffing for the bureau’s Execu- giving ended on Jan.