Thursday, December 22, 2011

Open Letter to the Secretary

Dear Secretary Clinton, 

I have a suggestion that would instantly boost the morale of every single Foreign Service Officer. Get rid of the Fly America requirement for official travel. It's stupid and more often than not it costs the traveller more time and the Department more money. A more efficient way to handle official travel is to determine a maximum cost for a route, let the officer arrange his/her own flight, and reimburse the officer up to the max amount. Just like we do for hotel costs. This change may require an act of congress, which I realize makes the chances of this actually happening close to zero. But if you could pull this off, you would be immortalized in bronze right next to Ben Franklin at FSI.

Sincerely,
A travel-weary Foreign Service Officer

2 comments:

Becky said...

That would be awesome. It would reduce a ton of paperwork/bother too.

Anonymous said...

Here, here.