U.S. Department of State Fiscal Year 2019 Agency Financial Report
The Department will elaborate on these efforts in response to several of the OIG’s Management Challenges findings below. Maintaining Adequate Staffing Levels to Meet Operational Needs The OIG notes that many Department entities experience difficulty maintaining staffing levels, a problem compounded due to a 17-month Department-wide hiring freeze. The Department agrees that it is critically important to reach and maintain adequate staffing levels and has made significant progress in 2019. Under Secretary Pompeo’s leadership, currently the Department is just one percent shy of its goal to have over 13,000 Foreign Service (FS) employees by January 2020, with nearly 12,800 FS staff on board as of October 2019. In 2019, the Department hired 515 new FS employees (247 Specialists and 268 Generalists) and another 112 Limited Non-Career Appointments. There also are eight FS classes (four Generalist and four Specialist) planned for 2020. Although, unlike the FS, Civil Service (CS) hiring occurs on a case-by-case basis, the Department is pursuing hiring levels roughly 700 above current levels (currently at 10,300) – an increase of nearly seven percent. The Department takes the impact of vacancies on staff morale very seriously, and remains committed to pursuing innovative strategies to attract and retain a highly-qualified workforce and expedite recruitment. At the same time, the Department is actively fostering a culture that is family-friendly and conducive to self-care by helping employees juggle the demands of work and family, including aging parents, childcare, and medical emergencies. Some recruitment and retention strategies include: Recruitment: ■ ■ Prioritizing hiring for vacant Human Resources (HR) Specialist positions (performing CS recruitment) at the Department’s largest HR Service Provider; ■ ■ Signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) to provide support for the recruitment and hiring of State CS employees. DFAS has agreed to process as many as 50 to 60 recruitment requests per month for at least the next year effective November 1, 2019; ■ ■ Encouraging hiring managers to identify those positions that may be converted to a Domestic Employees Teleworking Overseas program (DETO) position; ■ ■ Encouraging managers to allow “tandem couple” employees to fill domestic jobs with DETO positions where their spouses are assigned; ■ ■ Offering the Consular Fellows and Information Management Specialists online tests globally at approximately 130 additional testing centers around the world to increase accessibility for applicants interested in these two tracks; ■ ■ Reducing the Foreign Service Officer assessment timeline to attract candidates, enhance assessment capacity, and to make the Department more competitive with the private sector; and ■ ■ Launching a pilot for expedited/increased veteran hiring for civil service IT positions. Retention: ■ ■ Developing flexibilities on leave without pay and creating a working group to explore flexibilities in existing policies to support families, particularly new parents; ■ ■ Publishing an online “Director General of Human Resources Digest” that raises awareness about new and existing policies and services, and maintaining a dedicated resources page for the Department community on the HR intranet site about the family care resources currently available; 132 | U nited S tates D epartment of S tate 2019 A gency F inancial R eport OTHER INFORMATION | MANAGEMENT’S RESPONSE TO INSPECTOR GENERAL
Made with FlippingBook
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NjI5ODI=