Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976

152. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Equal Employment Opportunity (Pinckney) to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Management (Eagleburger)¹

Washington, January 26, 1976.

SUBJECT

• EEO Study

The Director General and I have for some months now been concerned about the effectiveness of our Foreign Service Reserve (Junior Officer) program. This program as you will recall provides for the recruitment and employment (with BEX approval) as Foreign Service Reserve Officers of some 20 minority group members per year. Participants in the program are expected during their 5 year tenure to qualify for appointment as Foreign Service Officers either by taking and passing the FSO written examination or via the Lateral Entry process.

While this program has been one of the major sources of minority Foreign Service Officer appointments (second only to Management Reform Program) it has yielded only 37 career appointments since its implementation in 1967. (We estimate that it should have yielded closer to 100 by the end of 1975.) The pass rate at the Lateral Entry Oral Examination stage is decreasing. Five out of seven candidates examined during 1974 passed the Lateral Entry Oral Examination while during 1975 only three out of eleven passed. During 1975 two candidates were separated while in probationary status. The 1975 Threshold Promotion Boards report that only 7 percent of the FSR/JO eligibles were recommended for promotion and that 5 percent were low ranked. The Board also expressed concern over evidence of persistent weakness in verbal skills and identified this factor as the major contributor to the comparative low ranking of FSR/JO participants.

As I reported to you earlier, 1976 looms as an important year for the program. Twenty-five participants will become eligible for Lateral Entry during the year and we had hoped that a meaningful number of that total would qualify for Foreign Service Officer appointments. Current trends, however, would not support such optimism.

Our initial analysis of the program led to a preliminary conclusion that the problem lay in the Lateral Entry process. We felt that the alarming increase in oral examination failures resulted from inadequate orientation and counseling of participants who appeared to misunderstand the conditions of their service and who took too lightly the oral examination process. In an effort to correct this deficiency, M/EEO has intensified its contacts with JO candidates to make clear to each the conditions of the contracts under which they serve and to emphasize the importance of the Lateral Entry examination. Reactions from participants suggest that this action has corrected some misconceptions and there are indications of increasing efforts on the part of participants to prepare themselves for the oral examination. There is no guarantee, however, that the pass rate will improve. The problem of performance weaknesses identified by the Selection Boards has ominous implications.

The developments set forth above lead us to conclude that if the FSR/JO program is to survive, the Department will require professional guidance in correcting deficiencies in the program.

The program needs to be examined in its entirety to determine the cause of its failure to increase significantly the number of FSR appointments. At the same time the problem of competitive performance, particularly in the field of verbal skills, needs to be addressed. As the Lateral Entry oral examination is the most important step in the process of FSR conversion to FSO, that process needs to be carefully examined to assess its validity by comparison with other recognized testing systems. A policy with regard to the disposition of candidates currently in the program whose performance records after 5 years of service would not justify Lateral Entry consideration and/or whose performance records after 5 years of service justify Lateral Entry consideration but are found unqualified by the BEX oral examination panel needs to be developed. Lastly, we must seriously consider the question of providing remedial training to current participants in the program where such training is indicated.

Despite our current concern about the FSR/JO program I support its continuation at this time. While it has not yielded as many Foreign Service Officers as I think it might have, those who have joined the ranks under its provisions are serving competitively and are steadily advancing within the system (two-thirds have reached the mid-levels). I believe that with some modification, the program could provide a more steady and orderly increase in the number of competent and productive minority group officers in the FSO ranks. The Department has received wide acclaim for its Affirmative Action approach to recruitment and selection of minority group officers under this program, and I am convinced that it should be continued until our efforts at recruitment via the written examination process begin to show positive results.

The professional assistance to which I referred earlier can be provided by a professional research firm directed by Dr. Kenneth B. Clark whose 1967 study entitled “An Appraisal of the Process of Selecting Foreign Service Officers” included recommendations which, when modified, formed the basis for the development and implementation of our current FSR/JO program. Dr. Clark is fully familiar with the Department’s Foreign Service Officer selection systems. His firm would be eminently qualified to examine the program and provide us with the guidance necessary to make it more productive.

In July of last year we forwarded to you a memorandum recommending a task force to study FSO women.² We remain concerned, for example, by the fact that the representation of women FSO’s has increased only 2% in ten years (from 7% to 9%) inspite of lateral conversions from FSS and accelerated outside recruitment. We therefore remain convinced that a study of women FSO’s is necessary. In his 1967 research, Dr. Clark also addressed himself to women FSO’s. That background, plus other qualifications mentioned above, argues in favor of combining a study of women FSO’s with the study urged earlier. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the fate and problems of minority FSO’s in many ways resemble the fate and problems of women FSO’s. A simultaneous study of both should be extremely useful to the Department and would best be accomplished by Dr. Clark.

I urgently request your permission to discuss with Dr. Clark the feasibility and costs of a study along the lines suggested above.³

1. Source: Department of State, Policy and Procedural Files of the Deputy Under Secretary for Management: Lot 79 D 63, M Chron, January 1976 F. No classification marking. In an attached handwritten note addressed to Eagleburger, January 26, Special Assistant Donald J. Bouchard wrote: “You might recall that we intended to meet with Sam [Pinckney] and D[irector] G[eneral] on this.” Bouchard added, “I’ve not run this past DG prior to your perusal. Although I don’t believe that this is a great problem, DG should be aware of attached. Maybe the time is ripe for a discussion with all parties.”
2. See Document 148.
3. No evidence of the proposed study has been found. In EEO ’s annual assessment of minority hiring, the results of which were printed in the July 1977 Department of State Newsletter, minority employment in the Department changed “little” in 1976. “Minority group employees,” defined as African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans, constituted 15.1 percent of the Department’s total work force as of December 31, 1976. The total number of minority employees increased by 12, although all were employed in the Civil Service. The number of minority Foreign Service employees remained unchanged at 547, out of a total of 8,939. (“Minority Employment: Little Change in ’76,” Department of State Newsletter, July 1977, p. 36)