Departments:

Letters to the Editor

The Post of the Month has been a long-standing feature of State Magazine and over the years, many of you may recall your overseas post being featured and still treasure the clippings and photos. But as with many of our long-running features, the Post of the Month recently has undergone a substantive change that we believe has made it far more valuable to our readers.

Until as recently as July 1997, the feature was mostly a photo spread with captions but very little text. It was a nice touch, but we thought you deserved more. We wanted to give you firsthand reports on life at a particular post and information both enjoyable to read and helpful in deciding which posts to bid on.

Change is never easy and often meets with resistance, at least initially. But in energizing and "growing" the feature, you--the contributors who serve as our "field correspondents"--have been the engineers of this feature transformation. The result is a livelier and more candid Post of the Month, as evidenced in this month's feature on Thessaloniki.

Our readers can take pride in the progress State Magazine has made and continues making as it enters the new millennium. As for Post of the Month, we look forward to featuring your post, and encourage you to get in the queue now since our calendar is filling fast.

Carl Goodman

We encourage your responses to particular articles featured in State Magazine Online. We do, however, reserve the right to edit parts of letters for space requirements. Only signed letters will be considered. Names may be withheld upon request.

William Slany's "History of the Foreign Service," in May's issue, was good as far as it goes, but it should have been entitled "A History of the State Department's Foreign Service."

I searched in vain for any mention of the creation of the Foreign Agricultural Service in the 1950s or the U.S. Commercial Service in 1980. For that matter, the Commerce Department and other federal agencies had Foreign Services in the 1920s and 1930s. Their demise and integration into State as World War II approached would have spiced up Mr. Slany's history.

Laron Jensen
Commercial Counselor
U.S. Commercial Center, Jakarta

More on SUVs

In your June issue, Robert L. Dowell Jr. of Naples, Fla., commented on recent improvements in sport utility vehicles, the subject of my article in April.

True, some improvements have been made and others are on the way. Polycarbonate window glazing, for example, will replace glass in the side and rear windows of next year's models to lower the possibility of occupants being ejected during a rollover. The median stability of SUVs has improved as well, since the least stable vehicles are no longer sold and some of the newer models incorporate lessons learned from a 1990 study. Current SUVs also are required to display warnings about the stability hazard, which some may consider an improvement.

Simply moving in the right direction, however, does not mean the stability hazard has been effectively countered. In one of our geographic regions, for example, we experienced rollovers between February and June of this year that resulted in five injuries. Lack of respect for SUVs' unique operating requirements is a key cause of these accidents.

W. D. Davenport
Office of Safety/Health and Environmental Management

Portrait Is Inaccurate

In her May letter to the editor, Janice Kiser proposed directing resources from color printing of State Magazine "toward upgrading the building's pathetic technology...." While Ms. Kiser is entitled to her opinions, her portrayal of the Department's technology is inaccurate. The professionals who manage these systems provide essential support to the Department and U.S. diplomacy--from maintaining instantaneous contact with all U.S. Embassies and Consulates and handling more than 20 million email messages annually to processing payroll, personnel and financial transactions.

Must the Department continue to modernize and make better use of information technology? Of course it must. Secretary Albright recently told Congress she envisions a Department where State's "men and women will be as comfortable surfing the web as consulting traditional 'diplomatic resources.'" While the Department may not have achieved this and other important technology goals, recently deployed infrastructure and growing employee expertise provide a strong foundation for continued technological advances at State.

Daniel P. Sheerin
Information Resource Management

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