bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2014) — Spring 2014 // Printemps 2014, p. 4
Budget 2013 announced the amalgamation of DFAIT and CIDA. This offers a real opportunity to reshape the structure and management of the department’s workforce. In PAFSO’s view, the first immediate objective should be to address harmful inconsistencies in classification and staffing which have plagued employees for a decade and set the stage for last year’s strike. The longer-term objective should be to reassert Canada’s Foreign Service as the leading edge for Canadian interests in an increasingly volatile and complex world.
Nous partageons une fière tradition. C’est une source de motivation, un esprit de corps et un engagement professionnel. Toutefois, le service extérieur n’est ni une guilde ni un sacerdoce. En mettant l’accent sur l’excellence et la sélection fondée sur le mérite, nous sommes représentatifs du Canada et accueillants pour tous et toutes. Nous n’avons pas le monopole en matière de compétences, mais nous comptons dans nos rangs plusieurs filières de généralistes polyvalents. Nous sommes ouverts au changement valable, constructif.
DFATD is evolving fast though not always for the better. We have gone through Strategic Reviews, Transformation, DRAP, FS job action, and now amalgamation, all of which have perpetuated a cycle of disruption and realignment. We know that the organigrams created for today’s issues may not be needed tomorrow. However, as an organizing principle, rotationality remains essential to developing and managing “agile generalists”. Our task load requires people with broad ranging aptitudes and a myriad of professional experiences across the globe, supported by a compact cohort of specialists at headquarters. We need the right people in the right place at the right time.
Unfortunately, we are losing ground. Observers of Canada’s international performance note the pressing need for our diplomacy to regenerate itself as the pre-eminent (but not exclusive) agent for pursuing our global interests. They argue that key to any government’s stewardship of the instruments of national power remains a well-trained, motivated, and high-performing corps of professional diplomats — an imperative shared by all G7 and like-minded foreign ministries.
Treasury Board, it seems, agrees. TB documents defining the FS group contain a list of “inclusions” which can be modified as needed to reflect the government’s changing lines of business: trade policy, legal affairs, political relations, immigration, and so on. This group also features certain competencies essential to representing Canada abroad that transcend all of its streams and are perhaps unique in the non-executive public service:
Flexibility and adaptability to changing
environments Intercultural effectiveness Ability to exercise good judgment with
limited information and high consequence
of error Ability to perform in isolated locations with
minimal support ° Superlative networking, collaboration, and
communication skills Ease with senior and influential clients Linguistic fluency, including full
bilingualism
A ces compétences viennent s’ajouter la curiosité, l’intégrité, la ténacité et le courage. Ces qualités, jumelées à la permutabilité qui caractérise la gestion de ce cadre, font que notre service diplomatique convient le mieux aux besoins du ministère du fait qu’ils se posent dans des emplacements et des conditions qui ne se retrouvent pas dans les autres ministères.
What’s needed now? PAFSO has proposed four forward looking amalgamation measures to meet the needs of management and employees. They would produce a workforce primed to implement management priorities while offering employees sustained job satisfaction with meaningful career variety and progression:
1. Convert the Management and Consular Officer cohort to the FS group. The business case was made 20 years ago. However, we still need a political decision recognizing that MCO responsibilities have changed drastically over the decades and that they should be an “official” part of the Foreign Service.
2. Convertir les anciens postes d’agents de développement de l’ACDI qui conviennent à la définition de FS. Les affectations outremer à l’ACDI étaient gérées de manière ponctuelle, mais des centaines d’agents sont permutants dans la pratique. Ils constituaient une filière distincte du service extérieur jusque vers la fin des années 1980. Leurs descriptions de travail correspondent étroitement à celles du groupe FS.
3. Élargir la filière développement en filière de « programmation ». La dernière décennie a été témoin d’une forte hausse des activités de programmation au MAECD, en particulier dans les secteurs de l’aide à la sécurité et de la reconstruction. Le MAECD devrait évaluer le bien-fondé d’une filière de « programmation » élargie au sein du service extérieur, qui engloberait les agents de développement et ceux des filières affaires étrangères et commerce qui possèdent des compétences en exécution de programmes et
en gestion.
4. Resume classification review of Economist & Social Scientist (EC) and Commerce Officer (CO) positions. Inconsistencies in job descriptions at DFATD are a leading irritant for employees and impede sound HR management. We must address the consequences of mass conversion of FS positions to the CO and EC group in the mid-2000s (prompted by chronic under-recruitment of FS and the 2005 aborted split of DFAIT), along with the creation of dozens of new EC and CO positions. Potential benefits are enormous. Expansion of rotational pools will allow Human Resources to fill positions more nimbly. Streamlining positions into the FS group will reduce classification contradictions, pay inequities, and grievances. DFATD also could reduce its systemic reliance on acting situations and improve the ratio of positions abroad versus those in Ottawa. The larger pool of jobs overseas will develop even greater competence among FS in meeting Canada’s global needs. Les employés aimeraient davantage de possibilités d’occasions d’affectations interfilières. Les agents des fili¢res politique ou commerce qui possédent des antecedents en développement ou en gestion, et vice versa, pourraient appliquer ces connaissances, ce qui accroitrait le maintien de l’effectif. La conversion en bloc tiendrait compte des employés non FS qui aspirent a devenir permutants. Le maintien d’experts techniques dans le reste des cases EC, CO et PM (gestion des programmes) fournira une niche aux spécialistes qui désirent travailler a des enjeux internationaux tout en restant a Ottawa. Expanding the Foreign Service tent and overhauling outdated structures would inspire a more coherent corporate culture. Wider use of rotationality will increase the talent available to work with other departments and organizations outside the public service, boosting innovation in policy-making and programming and closing the so-called “culture gap” between DFATD and the rest of official Ottawa. These proposals will give the government a multi-functional workforce, expert in the art and practice of diplomacy, able to pivot as crises emerge, domestic priorities change, or the global environment shifts. Canadians deserve no less.
Tim Edwards was elected President of PAFSO in October 2011.
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Originally published in / Publié à l’origine dans bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2014) — Spring 2014 // Printemps 2014, p. 4. Read the rest of this issue / Lire le reste de ce numéro →
