We wish we could do more, but we think we are accomplishing a great deal. BENEFITS THROUGH LOCAL EMPLOYEES Senator SMITH. As we add natives to the personnel, are we not helping the economy and gradually working out of the business ourselves with good effect? Mr. STREIBERT. Yes; I think so. Senator SMITH. Is there any place where we do not have natives among the personnel? Mr. STREIBERT. No; there is no place and we advocate the free use of them. It varies from area to area. One other matter which I wish to mention which is of concern to us is that, of course, their salaries are on a local scale and where you have a condition of inflation, as you run into in many countries, rather quick inflations, that severely handicaps our use of them, since they work at great sacrifice for us, and our processes for increasing that scale are rather laborious and cumbersome. We have improved it a good deal, but it takes, as you perhaps know, a survey, and in this case we go through the State Department administrative processes, and it takes quite a little while to get some of these salaries up when the exchange rate goes very quickly as in Bolivia, let us say, or Chile. So we are always in a little trouble in trying to get the salaries up to the living costs. Senator GREEN. You gave the proportion of foreigners to nationals in our service. Have you any corresponding figures for other foreign countries? Mr. STREIBERT. No, sir. Senator GREEN. Is not this the highest proportion of nationals of any country you know of? Mr. STREIBERT. I really do not know. Senator GREEN. What is your belief, just as a belief? Mr. STREIBERT. Well, I wouldn't have a guess on that. I have looked at the proportion of ours and the State Department. I don't remember the figures, but I know that we use more foreign nationals relatively than the State Department does, and that is understandable. The reason I do not know is because the only other country that is engaged at all widely in information work is Great Britain. Senator GREEN. I wondered if you had the figures for them. Senator GREEN. Are they published? Mr. STREIBERT. Not to my knowledge. Senator Green. There is one disadvantage, I suppose, and that is that there are apt to be leaks to the foreign governments. Mr. STREIBERT. Well, we have rather strict security practices in that respect. You see, they do not have access to classified information. It is not permitted and it is enforced quite strictly. In fact, it is so strict that it has a countereffect in many cases where our very trusted locals and people who are doing very important work could not but feel I assume I would-discriminated against because they are not permitted to see so much. I saw that in Germany, for example. We have not run into any difficulty on leaks and we enforce those security rules rather strictly. Senator GREEN. Are these foreigners employed with the help of the foreign governments? Mr. STREIBERT. No, entirely on our own. We, of course, check them for security in the local country with our mission security officers and we have not had any difficulty in this respect. I cannot emphasize enough the fine quality and character of many of these able people. They are highly educated. We use them, of course, for translation. We use some in our cultural work and they are extremely effective, because they know the country, obviously, better than we could. They know the language and know the people and are good eyes and ears for us. RECRUITMENT OF AMERICANS FOR OVERSEAS POSITIONS Senator GREEN. Is there difficulty getting enough Americans for those jobs? Mr. STREIBERT. Well, there is always difficulty getting enough good ones, and we are trying to increase the quality of our officers abroad. We have made a good deal of progress and except for the Near East area and Africa, we are pretty well staffed up now. We have only a few vacancies. Senator GREEN. What increased measures did you use to improve the quality? Mr. STREIBERT. Effort. We just worked at it harder. That is about the only thing I can say, sir. We tried to get as wide a selection as possible and tried to hasten the security clearance of good people so that we wouldn't lose them. I established a practice of making an informal commitment in advance of security clearance and subject to it, so that in the case of a particular person who was well qualified for a particular job and whom we knew we wanted for that job, the person could be sure of getting that job when his security clearance came through. We still have to wait 3 months, although we do have a limited number of priorities for 1-month clearance. We have had excellent cooperation from civil service. RECRUITMENT PROBLEMS Yet, in speaking now of recruiting for the foreign field, naturally, the candidates would have had some foreign experience. That means we have to check in the field. That takes an additional indeterminate number of months. It can go as high as 6 more months. We have had as much as 9 months' wait for clearance. The result is that we only get about a third of the people that we put through for clearance and are cleared because they have taken other jobs meanwhile. They just can't wait. I must say, however, that this program has always suffered under that. It is nothing new to us. It is required, as you know, by the Smith-Mundt Act, and we just have to work harder at it and put much more effort and put much more resources into it, and widen our sources from which we seek to get people and get all the help we can. PERCENTAGE OF AMERICAN PERSONNEL TURNOVER ABROAD Senator GREEN. Now, these increased efforts get an increased quality of people in. Has it resulted in an increase in overturn? Mr. STREIBERT. No. It has been filling vacancies and the rate of overturn has not gone up. Senator GREEN. Vacancies means overturn; does it not? Mr. STREIBERT. No; because it seems that in this kind of a foreign activity, there is always a large vacancy that had been accepted, as high as 20 percent, and it is caused by leaves, by transfers, by emergencies, illnesses, and various causes, but there is that amount of attrition. We never seem to be able to recruit to get the full complement, so that in order to overcome that, and I will speak to this, if I may, we saw that we had to over-recruit, so to speak. We had to get about 15 percent more people to put them in the pipeline in order to keep the posts full in the field. In the mission requests here, you will find an onduty additional man-hour allocation of funds to allow for this training and in transit and home leaves, which we feel we must give on schedule as they are due, to permit the fulfillment of all these overseas mission positions. The House committee criticized that. They said they thought it was a new kind of gadget to increase our employment. My response was I did not know how to do it any differently, that I would be open to suggestions. My concern is that we keep the overseas missions posts filled with people to do the work and any way that we can accomplish that would be satisfactory to me in the matter of appropriation details and budget. I found since this has improved that we get voluntary response from the field, that they are able to accomplish so much more and do so much more when they have a full complement of people. A Publlc Affairs Director can get away from his post at the capitol because he is not tied there through vacancies, and he can do work that is necessary for him to do in other posts in the country and outside of the office. There was this postponement of leave where people in hardship posts even were there a year beyond the time they should have their leave or be transferred. This was a thing that is very difficult to do quickly, but it is all of a piece of getting better quality people because you have to manage them well, I think, in order to get good people to work with you. RESIGNATIONS Senator GREEN. We have heard from other witnesses about the difficulty of getting good men in the service. Has there been any increase in resignations? Mr. STREIBERT. No, sir. I think they have rather tended to be reduced but I would expect the turnover rate would not decline because part of this process, I would think, for the next 2 or 3 years would be a selection out. As better people come in or become available, those who have been necessary in the past because they were available now would be judged on their abilities, and if they do not measure up, we would hope to be able to replace them. Senator GREEN. That is supplemented by a weeding out process? Mr. STREIBERT. That is right, sir. Senator GREEN. Thank you. Senator KILGORE. I have a few more questions I would like to ask while we are still on that. UTILIZATION OF RETAIL CREDIT COMPANIES Speaking of this check up on applicants, did you utilize retail credit companies to secure information on applicants for positions in USIA? Mr. STREIBERT. We did for a while; yes, sir. Senator KILGORE. What were they charging you? Mr. STREIBERT. It went up. We got an estimate of, I think, $25 a name. Then it went to $50, where we have discontinued it. Senator KILGORE. It ran to $50? Mr. STREIBERT. Yes, sir. SECURITY CHECKING Senator KILGORE. Including the security check and everything else, what is the average cost per applicant of doing all this security checking? Mr. STREIBERT. Well, the cost of the actual fee charged by Civil Service varies according to their average expenses but it is now $245, the present rate. It has been higher. It has been to $265. Senator KILGORE. Their security checking organization does the checking; not the FBI? Mr. STREIBERT. That is right. Senator KILGORE. It is done by Civil Service's staff? Mr. STREIBERT. The field staff. They check in the same manner as the FBI field staff, I believe. BACKGROUND OF EMPLOYEES ON CONTRACT PERSONNEL SURVEY Senator KILGORE. I would like you to furnish for the record at this point, because there has been some inquiry, the names, salaries and fees paid per person and the background in Government personnel administration of each person assigned by Booz, Allen & Hamilton on that survey. There has been some question raised as to the qualifications, and so forth. I would like that for the record. (The information referred to follows:) We engaged Booz, Allen & Hamilton, a firm of management consultants, to conduct the survey of the Personnel Division. This firm has been providing professional counsel to leading businesses throughout the Nation for over 40 years and has been serving the Federal Government for over 15 years. It has conducted various studies for over half the departments of the Federal Government and for many independent agencies. The men assigned to the study for USIA were Ralph E. Smiley, Gavin Pitt, and Gordon Smith. Mr. Smiley has been associated with the firm for 10 years. He is a graduate of Ohio State University where he received his bachelor of science degree and also completed his graduate work in public administration. Prior to joining the firm he had 11 years' experience in public administration, first with the State of Ohio and then with Federal agencies in the field and in Washington. He served in the United States Navy during World War II. During the 10 years he has been associated with the firm, he has conducted many organization and personnel surveys of industries, insurance companies, and institutions. Since 1950 he has been the partner in charge of the firm's Washington office and has directed surveys of Federal agencies and departments. Mr. Pitt has been associated with the firm for 6 years. He graduated from Brown University with a bachelor of arts degree and took his graduate work at Columbia University. Prior to joining the firm he had 10 years' experience in the personnel field, including 6 years as personnel director of industrial companies. During the 6 years he has been associated with Booz, Allen & Hamilton he has conducted a great variety of surveys in personnel administration, including organization surveys, compensation studies, and personnel development studies. Mr. Smith has been associated with the firm for 5 years. He has his B. S. degree in public administration from the University of Massachusetts and his M. S. degree in government management from the University of Denver. Prior to joining the firm he had over 3 years experience with State and local tax foundations and conducted research studies of national and local government problems. He served in the United States Army for over 4 years during World War II. During the 5 years he has been associated with Booz, Allen & Hamilton he has conducted organization and procedure surveys for municipalities, States, and the Federal Government as well as for universities and welfare institutions. Booz, Allen & Hamilton was unable to provide the information concerning fees and salaries. EMPLOYMENT OF OVERSEAS AMERICANS AND LOCALS BY COUNTRY Senator KILGORE. Could you furnish for the record a breakdown of how many people you have on the rolls, that is the number of Americans and locals, by country? Mr. STREIBERT. Yes, we have that, surely, by countries. (The information referred to follows:) Employment as of Mar. 31, 1955, by area and country |