11 January 2012
The Foreign Service Directives (FSDs) have been reformatted to bring the Directives into line with other National Joint Council Directives, to ensure accessibility to the visually impaired, and to enhance user-friendliness to all employees.
There has been no change in substance. While the directive numbers have remained unchanged, each directive has simply been reordered with the addition of titles and renumbered sections and subsections. Instructions and Guidelines have been moved to the end of each directive. When dollar amounts are subject to change on a regular basis, these have been moved to an appendix to the directive. Formulas which were contained in a directive, for example the formula to determine the amount payable on early termination of posting, will also be found in an appendix following the applicable directive.
It should also be noted that “post” and “mission” are no longer interchangeable. “mission” means an office of a department outside Canada and “post” means a city, community or other geographic locality in which a “mission” is located.
The implementation date of the reformatted FSDs is February 1, 2012 and are now available at http://www.njc-cnm.gc.ca/directive/fsd-dse/index-eng.php. These FSDs will be the basis for input to the 2012 cyclical review of the FSDs, so you should familiarize yourself with them in order to respond to the request for input which PAFSO expects to send out to members in April 2012.
If you have any questions, please contact George Clayburn.