Here is your update from FCS Vice President Donald Businger. Please send any comments or questions to <Donald.Businger@mail.doc.gov>.

In my April Foreign Service Journal “VP Voice” I addressed generally the topic that became the focus of our Spring 2007 single mid-term proposal, i.e., domestic assignments. In that column, I was twice overoptimistic – first, in asserting that I would have updated the website with a summary of that mid-term which was tabled in March almost a month ago, and second in saying that hopefully management would have already signed off on two of our three Fall 2005 mid-terms. Neither has yet occurred, but by this Afsanet I am catching up on the first, and recent exchanges with management at and following the EAP SCO Conference in Pomona CA a week ago portend a quick resolution of the second.

In the background to our Spring 2007 mid-term proposal to renegotiate the rules concerning domestic service and assignments, AFSA reviewed the so-called 7-year rule and the 15-year rule. The 7-year rule stipulates that all new employees since the 1994 register are required to serve 2 of their first 7 years in a USEAC (U.S. Export Assistance Center). The 15-year rule states that the Director General shall seek to assign officers at least once every fifteen years, so that while the majority of time is spent overseas some time is spent in the United States.

It is clear that management has not consistently and evenly enforced either rule and domestic assignments, especially those in USEACs, have not been career-enhancing (see Foreign Service Journal April 2007 page 65 “VP Voice “Promotions and Domestic Assignments”). In AFSA’s view the system, although it may have served certain purposes in the past, is now broken and in need of repair in cooperation with management.

Our mid-term proposal in this area has been formulated openly to allow management and AFSA to seek the best way of amending the domestic assignment system, changing the rules, but enforcing them once agreed upon.