bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, pp. 33–34
In his column of April 28, Frank Howard of the Ottawa Citizen published excerpts of a telex emanating from the Embassy in Bonn:
According to a document being circulated among the Canadian diplomatic corps here and abroad, foreign service officers are in the dumps because of departmental personnel policy.
The document, designated “confidential” and purporting to have originated with the “officers of Embassy Bonn” is in the form of a telex addressed to the three deputy ministers in the External portfolio and other departmental brass. The distribution list also includes missions in London, Paris, Rome, Washington and Tokyo….
The document, a mixture of cable-ese and rotund rhetoric, is a lengthy critique of a recent statement from headquarters on promotions and evaluations of staff.
The writer reports that “the officers of this mission have been both heartened and saddened” by the personnel policy statement from headquarters.
On the one hand they welcomed the statement because “for the first time in recent memory department has made effort to place promotion process in context, for those whose careers and lives are directly affected.”
On the other hand, the anonymous writer claimed, the HQ statement “tended to sidestep problems which many believe… are having an insidious effect on intellectual fabric and quality of Canadian Foreign Service.”
Among other things the Bonn telex attacks the “exhortation (from HQ) to avoid inflating’ ratings”.
The writer claims that “fact of matter is that foreign service is a high-performance career with close to majority of officers operating at a level above that established by formal selection standards for their grade.”
The telex condemns the practice of assigning foreign service officers to positions rated lower than their rank.
This practice in effect is “deferring promotion possibilities to individuals by assignment downward: despite the theology, (We) would be surprised if there is any recorded case of an FS-2 being promoted to EX-1 on the basis of his performance in a ES-1 slot… particularly when assessments of such performance are described by department as ’inflated’.”
The telex also claimed that programs favoring women and other groups are resented:
66 … There is also a special uneasiness about policies which have the effect of skewing impartiality of system through emphasis of group advantage over individual excellence — often described as “ensuring correct ratios” — established on basis of gender or some other non-performance criterion. Most officers understand need for equal opportunity programs but do not understand when one group is singled out for special treatment.”
The author(s) also get in a grumble about the advantages (in career terms) of being in Ottawa:
“Finally there is fact that promotion chances appear enhanced at headquarters and there is what amounts to a ’promotion tax’ for serving abroad. Folklore may exaggerate fact to some extent, but rating system’s heavy emphasis on resource and program management (both commodities, in quantitative terms at least, more available at headquarters than abroad) is real. Perception that process comes before product as a criterion for promotion has thus damaged ability of foreign service to deliver the product, and foreign service officers, particularly in middle ranks, feel that they may be penalized for serving abroad.”
The authors claim that the general lack of promotions is affecting morale: “To be informed, as a young, ambitious officer, that statistically speaking, one promotion in a three-decade career is not only possible, but probable is daunting: why bother?”
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, pp. 33–34. Read the rest of this issue →
