FAO Proponent Division Redesigned to Address the Future

March 1998

As part of the recent redesign of the Army Staff, the Foreign Area Officer Proponent Division (located within the Directorate for Strategy, Plans and Policy, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans) has been restructured to better respond to the future needs of FAOs around the world. The FAO Proponent has always been tasked with working policy issues in all eight elements of the personnel life-cycle management (structure, acquisition, individual training and education, distribution, deployment, sustainment, professional development, and separation), however, with just two officers dedicated to running the program only a little of the tasked work was accomplished over the last few years. Many tasks traditionally accomplished by other basic branch and functional area proponents had to be undertaken by an already overburdened FAO assignments cell at OPM, PERSCOM or not done at all. By 1995, literally, we rated ourselves as dead last on a continuum of Branch and Functional proponents -- we were doing less for our people than any other proponent. Even accepting that we might have been overly critical of our own performance there was plenty of room for improvement.

In mid-1996, at the direction of the then DCSOPS of the Army, GEN Shinseki, we designed a new organization to better cope with the tasks that other proponent offices were already accomplishing. The key element of that proposed restructuring was the creation of regional area of concentration desk managers, to handle all policy, planning, and execution aspects of regional in-country training. The proposal was approved in the Fall of 1996. Now those regional desk officers are actually on board to manage accessions, training and education, and the "care and feeding" of both FAO trainees and serving FAOs in the field.

We have officers handling each regional area of concentration (or groups of them) and all of the problems that come up within those regions. Whether or not the proponent office is eventually staffed at 13 (the maximum espoused by the last Army DCSOPS) or as low as eight, we are in a better position to do our job than ever before. Some of you have already experienced first-hand the improved service to the field. It will get better and better as we get our feet on the ground. Frankly, some of the missions outlined in Army Regulation 600-3 as the life-cycle elements are a bit nebulous and need redefining before we tackle them. Others can and are being tackled as this is being written. Such projects, as a full review of the Advanced Civil Schooling Programs acceptable for FAO training are already being worked, and we hope to be able to provide the FAO Community a revised list of graduate school programs that is both authoritative and defensible in any forum, in the near future. The reorganization has also allowed us to improve our coordination with the fledgling FAO programs of our sister Services, creating a synergy between us that will, hopefully, result in the strengthening of all the programs.

As noted earlier, many of the tasks that over time the Assignments Team at PERSCOM and the DLI FAO Liaison Officer have been forced to shoulder must slowly revert to this office. The idea is to free up the assignments officers to focus their attention even more to their real tasks -- choosing the best possible person for each FAO job -- and not get side-tracked by accessions, training, career development, and policy issues. Changes of this sort will be difficult to implement, partially because people have become set in their ways of operating, but also of the detailed coordination inherent in the tasks themselves. Only with the support and cooperation of the various offices concerned with FAO matters will this transition be successfully accomplished. Ultimately, our goal at the Proponent Office is to create a climate of teamwork and work hand-in-glove with the other offices involved in FAO issues, and thereby better serve you the community -- One Team, One Fight.

1997, Foreign Area Officer Association
Springfield, Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org