Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09ISLAMABAD2641
2009-10-30 13:33:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Embassy Islamabad
Cable title:  

MANAGEMENT 2010 LOOKING FORWARD

Tags:  AMGT KICA PK 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO4649
RR RUEHLH RUEHPW
DE RUEHIL #2641/01 3031333
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 301333Z OCT 09
FM AMEMBASSY ISLAMABAD
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5767
INFO RUEHKP/AMCONSUL KARACHI 2447
RUEHPW/AMCONSUL PESHAWAR 7092
RUEHLH/AMCONSUL LAHORE 8046
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL 1064
RUEHRH/AMEMBASSY RIYADH 5972
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 ISLAMABAD 002641 

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/EX AND M

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: AMGT KICA PK
SUBJECT: MANAGEMENT 2010 LOOKING FORWARD

Ref: Islamabad 2080

Sensitive But Unclassified

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 ISLAMABAD 002641

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/EX AND M

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: AMGT KICA PK
SUBJECT: MANAGEMENT 2010 LOOKING FORWARD

Ref: Islamabad 2080

Sensitive But Unclassified


1. (SBU) Summary. Mission Pakistan's Management Section evaluated
its goals and objectives, to determine how best to direct its
efforts over the coming year. This cable summarizes the mission
environment as it relates to management services, and lays out what
we hope to achieve in the coming year. To support the Mission's
growing population, we are consolidating administrative support
structures, reorganizing and expanding staffing to support our
projected population in 2011, and implementing new approaches to
share information and to manage critical constraints such as TDY
lodging and armored vehicles. End Summary.


2. (SBU) Mission Pakistan has changed dramatically in the last few
years with the President, Congress, and the Department position that
Pakistan is key to stability in the region and success in our goals
in Afghanistan. The Kerry-Lugar Bill will ramp up non-military
assistance to $7.5 billion over the next five years, expanding on
our recent emphasis of military assistance. Official Mission
Pakistan personnel growth continues to be dramatic. Once a large
mission of about 250 US Direct Hires, we are now 657 US Direct Hire
strong with hundreds of "permanent" TDY personnel. Building plans,
at various stages in all four cities, will exceed $1 billion.
Management and ICASS needs to catch up its infrastructure growth to
meet the demands of the increase in Mission size.

--------------
Who We Support
--------------


3. (SBU) The Mission supports a wide variety of DoD's military
interests in both Pakistan and Afghanistan in its execution of $1
billion in annual assistance funding to the Pakistani military for
counter insurgency efforts. We also support an average of 350
MilAir lift transit flights through our corridor each day, and
process about 1,800 containers each week through the port of Karachi
and onward to Afghanistan overland. The U.S. military's presence in
Pakistan is approximately 225 long-term (over six months) personnel
and growing.


4. (U) USAID's developmental assistance program is now estimated to
be $1.5 billion a year. USAID's personnel numbers have grown
accordingly, and now stand at about 136 employees and 30 long term
TDYers. All of these numbers continue to grow. State's assistance

funding is mostly provided through INL and DS funding. It now
totals $150 million, and is directed at increasing the capabilities
of the Pakistani law enforcement activities. NAS currently employs
10 US Direct Hires and 30 contractors, and maintains an air wing in
Quetta with 3 fixed wing assets and 14 helicopters.


5. (SBU) State personnel resources have grown as well, with about
368 fulltime personnel in the country. This number includes 44 of
the 126 additional State positions requested in the August 2009
"Blue Skies Initiative" (reftel). In addition, there are about 200
State TDYers constantly in country.


6. (U) We consistently brief visiting VIPs that while Pakistan is
part of the "Big Three" (with Iraq and Afghanistan),there are huge
contrasts in our operational environment. The Government of
Pakistan is a mature, functioning bureaucracy. It limits many of
the operational requirements of this Mission, a point of which they
often remind us, in word and deed. Diplomatic procedures are
completely different than Iraq and Afghanistan. We often find that
people want to bring to us Iraq/Afghanistan-style solutions to
challenges that do not exist, or at least have different solutions,
here in Pakistan.

--------------
Management Goals
--------------


7. (U) With the Mission largely dependent on U.S. staff on one year
assignments, good accountability suggests we establish goals for now
through Summer 2010. Our goals for fiscal year 2010 are:

a. (U) Manage our growth. Build management processes and an
infrastructure by Summer 2010 that will support the Mission's
expected population in Summer 2011.

b. (U) Ensure that we maintain Mission Pakistan as "normal" as
possible. While we cannot change the security environment, we can
control the quality of our clients' working and living conditions.
We need to ensure that we keep conditions at the mission as "normal"
as possible, so we can attract strong bidders and avoid the trap of
managing to other war-footing missions' inescapable restrictions.

ISLAMABAD 00002641 002 OF 004



c. (U) Manage the message, to the Department, our VIP visitors, and
our clients. In such a dynamic and high visibility atmosphere, it
is important that decision makers have an accurate picture of our
situation and issues.

d. (U) Overcome our continuity problem. With a one year posting, we
need to establish active methodologies to ensure arriving officers
are well informed and not reinventing solutions and methods.

--------------
Management Strategies
--------------


8. (U) Management Workforce: The Mission currently has 16 ICASS US
Direct Hires and 7 program positions in Communications/Systems,
roughly the same number as in 2006. We will receive our first new
ICASS USDH in late October 2009, and the Department is creating as
many as 6 new US Direct Hire positions as a result of our "Blue
Skies Initiative". We have been more successful in increasing LES
staff in the Management Section, adding 187 LES positions in late
FY2009. It generally takes six months to get an LES security
clearance, so most of these positions remain unfilled. We have
about 1000 LES ICASS staff.

a. (U) The Department has supplemented our strength with generous
TDY support. While very welcome, it underscores the need to
increase permanent FTE to build a sustainable management
infrastructure. Our ratio of USDH service providers to Americans
serviced in 2009 is the lowest in the SCA bureau at .037, fifty
percent below the average ratio at SCA posts.

b. (U) Our current ratio of LE ICASS staff to Americans serviced is
1.5, 40 percent below the SCA average. We already have plans to add
187 LE staff, a 29 percent increase. In September 2009, we
undertook a complete, bottom-up review of our management
organization to ensure that we place the added LE staff into
organizational structures that make sense for the future. We
developed a new organizational chart for each management section.


9. (U) Managing Growth: The explosive growth in the last few years
of DoD, USAID, and certain components of State occurred out of sync
with the appropriate strengthening of the management platform. We
are working to shape the entire logistical format of this Mission in
all four cities, and retrofit many of the management systems and
structures so that the Mission grows appropriately. This includes
establishing furniture/appliance/generators pools, rightsizing
dedicated vehicle allocations with corresponding growth in the
shared (ICASS) motorpools, combining scattered procurement and
position classification functions, and minimizing duplicative
administrative support structures by closely reviewing the need for
every non-ICASS administrative position addition (USDH and LES).


10. (SBU) Armored Vehicles: The GOP severely restricts the
importation of Armored Vehicles (AVs),and has established an
"authorization" of 1 AV for every 4 Direct Hires at post. We are
currently at about 3 times our "authorization", and over the past 3
years the few vehicles that the GOP Customs allowed to be cleared
has been as the result of a direct appeal by the Ambassador. These
appeals have often times not been successful and demurrage fees for
vehicles awaiting clearance can exceed several hundred thousand
dollars per year.

a. (U) Individual agencies have purchased ARs, which stack up in
Customs, without overall Mission planning. Agencies have developed
their own motorpool fleets rather than maximize the use of a shared
service (ICASS motorpools). The Mission now faces an increasingly
difficult situation as each agency wants more vehicles.

b. (U) We will continue to request that the GOP waive the 25% AR
limit, as they have in practice for other diplomatic missions.

c. (U) Barring a change in the importation limits, management is
examining whether to assign each agency a set number of dedicated
ARs for operational requirements that are not typical of pooled
operations. This will compel agencies to better utilize the
motorpool for normal motorpool functions, thus maximizing the use of
the limited number of vehicles the Mission is allowed to import.


11. (U) Housing: We have been able to keep up with the fast growing
demands for housing. It has required us to use group housing in
many situations, such as for ODRP, SOCCE, contractors, and others
coming as an operational group (OIG, OBO, DART, etc). Between June
1 and September 30, we turned over about 80% of our existing housing
pool and obtained 45 new housing units. We now have 315 housing
units.


ISLAMABAD 00002641 003 OF 004


(U) We believe that we can continue to meet the Mission's housing
needs in this manner. We strongly believe that it is in the US
Government's interests to do so, in order to keep the post
differential relatively low, bid numbers high, and to offer some
relief to personnel from the strain of work demands.


12. (SBU) TDY Support: The bombing of the Marriott Hotel in March
2008 changed TDY management at post. In August we had a "soft"
opening of our Phase I TDY pods of 70 rooms, and have recently
opened all 125 units. This week, we hosted about 85 TDYer and press
guests who came with the Secretary's visit together with about 70
longer term residents. These are allocated 75% to RAO for long term
TDYers, and the remainder to ICASS for short term TDYers with State
having preference. The next phase (64 units) should break ground in
November 2009. We also maintain seven TDY houses in the community
in Islamabad, and one in Lahore (adding two more in Lahore soon).
Each averages 5 bedrooms. Islamabad also has 2 "VIP" apartments on
the compound. To minimize the impact on ICASS resources, our
employee association manages these units.

(U) Last year we collected $450,000 in ICASS TDY invoices, thought
to be the highest in the world. This reflects our large TDY
presence and over $500,000 in partial year invoices reflects our
growth plane.


13. (U) Building Projects: Islamabad: OBO has an Islamabad Master
Plan that includes the construction of temporary and permanent
buildings estimated at $1 billion total, with a land purchase of 18
acres. To date, a 125 unit TDY trailer quarter and safehaven
recreational center has been completed, a 50 person temporary USAID
building has been initiated, and a contract has been let for a
64-unit TDY trailer facility.

a. (U) Peshawar: OBO intends to buy a property in Peshawar that will
provide adequate, secure living and working space. The recent plan
to purchase the PC Hotel was terminated as the GOP would not allow
us to buy this property. There are several security projects
underway for the current building.

b. (U) Lahore: OBO plans to purchase land to either increase the
current location's footprint, or procure a site to build a new
consulate building or to build a secondary egress from the current
building.

c. (U) Karachi: A new NCC will be completed in Summer 2010. We
need to develop a new plan with OBO to meet growth demands for
office space and beds not included in the NCC plan.


14. (SBU) Managing the Outside: A great deal of management effort
is spent managing others. This includes working with the MFA and
Ministry of Interior on bilateral relations and support issues.
Another key component is VIP Management, both in terms of their
logistical support (for which a Mission Visitors Section was created
in May 2009) as well as ensuring that visiting interlocutors
understand Management perspective.


15. (U) Managing Knowledge: To strengthen our institutional memory
and enhance our collaboration, we are launching a Team Pakistan
Sharepoint site in Opennet and a Team Pakistan blog on Intelink. To
improve our communication with ICASS customers and better track our
service performance, we are implementing eServices.

--------------
Conclusion
--------------


16. (U) The Mission's growth, as often happens, has not been in
lock step between the clients and the service providers. The
Management Section has a great deal of catching up to do in order to
meet current requirements. But given the long lead times in
bringing US Direct Hires to Pakistan as well as the lead time to
build and train LES staff, we must look two years down the line to
see what structure and people we need now. That effort has begun.
Between now and Summer 2010 we hope to have the structure largely
built. In the meantime, we will continue to rely heavily on TDY
support, as well as an extraordinary amount of overtime and
commitment.


17. (U) We will also make the hard decisions and implement the hard
practices of actively avoiding the institution of multiple service
providers and agency-specific administrative services.


18. (U) We will continue to actively engage the Pakistanis to
attempt to gain their cooperation on land and building issues, visa
issues, armored vehicle importation, and other issues where lack of
agreement hinders our mission.


ISLAMABAD 00002641 004 OF 004



19. (U) Our Mission in Pakistan has high visibility in the US
Government. The work we do is as rewarding as any that officers
will do in their career. Living conditions, while not easy, are far
better than those offered by other such high-focus postings. Our
goal of making Islamabad an attractive posting will require that we
maintain adequate housing, reduce overtime, and bring more normalcy
and quality to our processes. We will measure our success by the
number of employees opting to stay for a second year.

PATTERSON