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In reply to the discussion: U.S. State Department Officials Call for Strikes Against Syria’s Assad [View all]24601
(3,955 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 18, 2016, 07:31 AM - Edit history (1)
You can likewise remove EX Scale and Schedule C personnel, all of whom are patronage employees. State has a bit more than 550 such jobs.
Career SES have due process rights.
The Internal Dissent Channel (IDC), which has been around since 1971, is set up to allow alternative views to be passed up the chain without retribution or reprisal.
Why would anyone without a closed mind object to that?
Should someone be removed? There should be an investigation into how it was leaked, especially since the authors included sensitive but unclassified information - which is fine since it's purpose, like whistle-blowing mechanisms, is to provide a secure and safe way to pass information. The difference is that whistle-blowing alleges misconduct or mismanagement while IDC is more analogous to the suggestion box. STATE should be commended that they maintain this in such a way that it's personnel are comfortable putting their names on an IDC communication. It reflects that employees believe that it serves it's purpose and isn't used to root out and punish someone who uses it.
If someone has been bored enough to read some of my other posts, they may see that I've been in Federal Government since 1972. There probably isn't anybody that agrees with any administration on everything. That has nothing to do with whether we fulfill our oaths of office and faithfully carry out the lawful decisions and policies, even the dumb ones.
Do I support the policy? Of course.
Do I agree? Irrelevant, with two qualifiers. First, when we believe there is misconduct, fraud, waste, abuse, or other mismanagement, then contact the IG, OGC, OSC, Chain of Command or make a complaint to Congress. Second, if a policy or action doesn't reflect wrongdoing, but the employee cannot carry it out as a matter of conscience, government work isn't for everyone and you can always do something else. But over the years, I've been fine telling my supervisors that it's time to move to another office and that they would be better served with someone without the reservations about remaining in my current position.