Stabilization and Reconstruction Staffing - RAND Corporation

52 Stabilization and Reconstruction Staffing: Developing U.S. Civilian PersonnelSimilar to the issues related to differing application of compensationpolicies discussed above, whereby the General Services Administration’sFederal Travel Regulations and the Department of State’sStandardized Regulations appropriately give agencies latitude in applyingthe regulations, differences in entitlements and compensation forsimilarly situated employees can occur. Many detailees traveled toIraq on temporary-duty travel orders and were never officially detailedto the CPA. The employee’s home organization paid the employee’ssalary and additional compensation, such as eminent-danger pay, foreignpost differential, and overtime. Increased compensation expenses,coupled with mission requirements that did not change just because anemployee was away on detail, reduced the U.S. government’s enthusiasmto provide volunteers.Different agencies also had different policies for leave, especiallyhome and administrative leave. State Department employees had moreleave flexibility during the CPA period than did DoD civilian employees,3161s, or those on IPA assignments—another potential sourceof friction and discontent. However, there is also an argument thatgreater flexibility in incentives is needed to recruit the best people fromthe public or private sectors. 5 We discuss this need in greater detail inChapter Five.Training, Deployment, and RedeploymentBy the time the Department of State assumed responsibility in Baghdad,deployment processing had evolved to an efficient and effectivesystem, although the evolution was not without angst. Civilian andmilitary personnel generally entered Iraq through a central processingcenter in Kuwait, using DoD’s Common Access Card (CAC) anda copy of the official travel orders to enter the country without visas.Deploying civilians processed through military deployment centers ineither Virginia or Texas, but they received little in the way of countryorientation. As organizational responsibility transferred from DoD to5 We use the term public sector to refer to government at the federal, state, and local levels.When we are referring only to the federal government, we use the term U.S. government orfederal government.