JCICS originally promised to make its proposed Standards of Practice available for review on January 20th. That date was later pushed back to January 27th and finally to “early February.” As of 1:00pm Pacific Time on February 13th the Standards are still not available.
We understand that it takes time and careful deliberation to craft these Standards. And we appreciate that JCICS sought the input of all interested parties. (Ethica published their comments on their website February 4th) However it is hard to imagine how JCICS will be able to stay within their proposed timeline for the Standards when this first benchmark has been delayed by nearly a month. At this point, agencies will only have two weeks to read and sign the Standards in order to meet their “Late February” deadline. That deadline does not have much room to be delayed — JCICS intends to “present our Standards of Practice to DIA and Vietnamese provinces through Joint Council’s International Relations Initiative” by “early March”. We sincerely hope that goal is indeed met since the intention of these Standards was to have a positive influence on the Agreement negotiations that will begin in earnest in March.
For more information on the JCICS Standards and the projected timeline see the JCICS Website.
5 Responses
This really, really concerns me. What are the factors in play here?
Why would JCICS not put these standards in place immediately?
I was rather concerned when I read Ethica’s comments. They stated that their comments were recommended additions to the proposed JCICS Standards of Practice. I was surprised that some of these recommendations weren’t already in the proposed draft Standards that they had seen.
It is disappointing, especially when we’ve been told multiple times that it was on a certain date.
I have a feeling that some agencies didn’t like the additions that were made as a result of Ethica’s comments. Unfortunately, when something like this is created, which is completely voluntary and has pretty much no enforcement behind it, you want to get as many people as possible to support it before you make it public, so the stricter you make it, the more agencies waver in their support of it.
Kind of like in Congress, when they secretly and privately try to make sure they will have enough votes for passage before they bring up legislation to be considered.
Our agency just sent out an email saying that they published the standards…now here’s where it gets fun.
Thanks for the heads up Jena – so busy packing for our trip I missed that the Standards were posted. I hope to return next week to find lots of good productive discussion about the Standards…