Here is your update from AFSA/FCS Vice President Don Businger.  Please
send any questions or comments to <donald.businger@mail.doc.gov>.

This is my first AFSANET/UPDATE as the re-elected Vice President of
AFSA for Commerce/FCS and I’m sure most of you know by now that
Stephen Anderson was elected in a write-in to succeed Will Center as our
AFSA Rep. My apologies for not communicating more often but my
attentions were given to closing out the 2005 negotiations (now posted
on the AFSA website as well as summarized in my June 22), to a couple of
very serious member issues, to my new responsibilities as Senior Advisor
chairing the LES Tradecraft Manual Working Group and the Short-term
Contractor Working Group, and last but not least to my own vacation
weeks in July and August...Please be sure to read the last paragraph
below as an action item potentially.

All or most of you also know that DG Israel Hernandez announced
Implementation Phase of TCD (Transformational Commercial Diplomacy) with
posts opening and closing and resulting staff increases and decreases
and he informed AFSA on August 14. We had also been involved in seeing
the NSDD-38s as they moved toward State and transmission. Anyone
impacted under the terms of the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement)
and the related MOU has presumably been taken care of (e.g., an officer
slated to go to a post being closed was extended at current post), so
AFSA is unaware of any negative impact not already addressed. Please let
us know if we missed anything.

DG Hernadez’s Chief of Staff and the Acting DDG Gabe Pellathy had an
informal but very useful meeting with your AFSA VP last week and I
followed up by providing him more information about the still
outstanding 2006 mid-term proposals and the admitted need for FCS
management and AFSA to resolve a certain number where informal agreement
has already been reached. These include SFS pay policy and Board issues
and AFSA access to the so-called technical briefings of the Board.

Speaking of the Board, each year AFSA is provided with a list of the
prospective Board volunteers or others both from the CS officer Corps
and from ITA for confidential comment to the DG. The actual Board
members remain to be selected and announced.

Also as posted on the AFSA website, our Spring 2007 AFSA mid-term
proposal focused on the so-called “7 year rule” requiring all
“new” officers who have not already served in a USEAC to do so
during their first seven years in FCS. This issue has been discussed
both at Regional SCO meetings at which I participated and with the DAS
OIO and we await a response from FCS management. I have already received
several comments but your comments/suggestions are welcome as we seek a
compromise of some sort, so that the rule is applied flexibly but
consistently and does not favor some few officers over the grand
majority of others.

Our assignments officer just yesterday sent an important and
informative email on the Fall 2007-2008 bid cycle soon opening, and when
I learned that some officers (especially those assigned domestically in
USEACs) had not received this message, I worked with many people at HQ
but especially with Angela to sort out and get corrected the relevant
group emails lists, in particular “CS ALL CO - Domestically
Assigned”. We continue to search for a longer-term resolution of
who is accountable for managing these important group emails in Lotus
Notes.

Finally, AFSA has the opportunity (possible action item) to submit 1-3
Fall 2007 mid-term proposals. Although there is some feeling that we may
have enough on our plate with the unresolved 2006 and Spring 2007
issues, I would be remiss if I did not offer all AFSA members the chance
to raise with me and Stephen any issues you might consider appropriate
(old or new) to raise well prior to September 30, which is our
submission deadline. So, any ideas out there...?

We will also have another shot in the Spring 2008. I should mention
both that I was re-elected unanimously but with a much smaller number of
votes than in 2005 (I have no idea whether this was due to the
membership not feeling the need to vote or for other reasons) and that,
given my onward assignment as SCO to Bern Switzerland in summer 2008, I
will be resigning as AFSA VP and transitioning from the “twinned”
Senior Advisor DAS OIO slot in summer 2008, and the AFSA Board will
choose a successor, so anyone interested please let us know! The next
AFSA Board meeting is September 5, and if there are any issues you wish
me to raise at the Board, please let me know via email or phone call
before then.

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