State Depts Passport Plan Upsets Presidential Management Fellows

July 3, 2007— -- As the State Department continues to dig through a mountain of passport applications that were due long ago, it is now turning to some of the department's newest members for help.

The State Department will send roughly 300 young employees, split roughly evenly Foreign Service Officers and Civil Servants, to its main passport processing centers to go through applications.

"The State Department has a mission and the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary have an obligation to meet the demand while we build up capacity take care of the higher demand for passports," said Patrick Kennedy, the director of the department's Office of Management Policy, in and interview with ABC News.

In mandatory meetings with the two groups this morning, Kennedy and other top State Department officials notified the employees that they will begin week long training next Monday and will deploy to the passport centers the following week for an eight week tour.

The Foreign Service Officers being sent to work on passports are relatively new to the department, Kennedy said. They are on their way to their first assignment, in training, or between early assignments.

The Civil Servants that were notified today of their new temporary position come from two of the department's entry programs. Presidential Management Fellows, an exclusive two-year postgraduate program throughout the government, and members of the department's Career Entry Program will form part of the group that they will be shipped off to training next week.

According to several people who attended the meeting, many of those to be sent out soon are upset with the way the announcement was made, with less than a week's notice before the training and little apparent regard for their previous plans.

Kennedy addressed both concerns in his interview, saying that they would not have to leave the Washington DC area for two weeks and that the department would make every effort to accommodate special situations.

According to Kennedy, the decision to send these groups was made yesterday by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and other top officials. Sources who attended the meeting said they all received e-mails late yesterday afternoon telling them to attend a minatory meeting this morning at 9 a.m., with no further details of what it was about.