ABSTRACT
The fall of 1979, Ben Read had approved an implementation plan, primarily directed to a complete revision of personnel regulations, some 1100 pages in all, to give life to the act, on the optimistic assumption that it would be passed much earlier. Perhaps the most difficult question of implementation was issuing the required new personnel regulations. PER was in a much more unstable condition, with respect to essential expertise in several important positions, than was desirable for optimal implementation of the Foreign Service Act. In a formal sense, implementation of the new act could not be completed until all new regulations and procedures were negotiated with the unions and in place, a process going on two and one-half years after the act became effective. Nevertheless, many of the major problems had been overcome, and the act was largely viable by the winter of 1982.
