[Senate Hearing 117-221]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-221
TRAINING THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE'S
WORKFORCE FOR 21ST CENTURY DIPLOMACY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE
DEPARTMENT AND USAID
MANAGEMENT, INTERNATIONAL
OPERATIONS, AND BILATERAL
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
INSERT DATE HERE deg.NOVEMBER 2, 2021
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-173 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire MARCO RUBIO, Florida
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut MITT ROMNEY, Utah
TIM KAINE, Virginia ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon TODD YOUNG, Indiana
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii TED CRUZ, Texas
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
Damian Murphy, Staff Director
Christopher M. Socha, Republican Staff Director
John Dutton, Chief Clerk
SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE DEPARTMENT AND USAID
MANAGEMENT, INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS, AND
BILATERAL INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland, Chairman
TIM KAINE, Virginia BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii RAND PAUL, Kentucky
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut TED CRUZ, Texas
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
MARCO RUBIO, Florida
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L., U.S. Senator From Maryland............. 1
Hagerty, Hon. Bill, U.S. Senator From Tennessee.................. 3
Polaschik, Hon. Joan, Deputy Director, Foreign Service Institute,
Washington, DC................................................. 4
Prepared Statement........................................... 6
Marcuse, Joshua, Former Executive Director, Defense Innovation
Board, Co-Founder and Chairman of NGO-Globally, Washington, DC. 21
Prepared Statement........................................... 23
Miller, Jr., Hon. David, President, U.S. Diplomatic Studies
Foundation, Washington, DC..................................... 29
Prepared Statement........................................... 30
(iii)
TRAINING THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE'S
WORKFORCE FOR 21ST CENTURY DIPLOMACY
----------
INSERT DATE HERE deg.TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2021
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on State Department and USAID
Management, International Operations, and Bilateral
International Development,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in
room SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Benjamin J.
Cardin presiding.
Present: Senators Cardin [presiding], Kaine, and Hagerty.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND
Senator Cardin. State Department and USAID Management,
International Operations, and Bilateral International
Development.
It is a pleasure to welcome our distinguished panel of
witnesses on this subject, and as I was explaining before we
got started, there is a series of votes on the floor of the
Senate. Senator Hagerty and I will do our best to proceed as
far as we possibly can. We will see how the timing works. We
will ask for all of your cooperation.
Today, the subcommittee intends to continue its exploration
of issues affecting the performance of the State Department,
focusing on the necessary training and professional development
to recruit and retain a high-performing workforce.
I want to thank Ranking Member Hagerty for his support in
developing this hearing and advancing the important work of
this subcommittee.
Senator Hagerty has repeatedly utilized his valuable
experience as the former Ambassador to Japan, giving us insight
as to how diplomacy works and what areas need to improve in
order for the United States to compete successfully in this
ever-complex global environment.
In addition to his diplomatic experience, Senator Hagerty
brings private sector experience that is also critical in
addressing these challenges. As I pointed out before we started
the hearing, he is a graduate from the training program. I
understand his exact grades are kept confidential and we cannot
do a release of that information.
I was pleased to see Secretary of State Antony Blinken
weigh in last week on the topic of today's hearing when he
issued his five pillars for modernizing American diplomacy. He
hit on many of the important themes that we raised at our July
hearing on modernizing the State Department for the 21st
century, including building the Department's capacity and
expertise, creating a climate for initiative and innovation,
modernizing technology and communications, and deepening
overseas engagement.
The most important pillar he noted, which is essential to
today's discussion, is building and retaining a diverse,
dynamic, and entrepreneurial workforce and empowering and
equipping the State Department employees to succeed.
I look forward to seeing a concrete plan for the rebuilding
effort Mr. Blinken spoke about, which will require
significantly increasing investments of time and resources in
the development of the Department's greatest assets; its
people.
Many of the most serious international challenges the
United States faces in 2021 will require the State Department
personnel to take the lead, calling for improved and expanded
training and professional development opportunities for Foreign
Service and Civil Service personnel.
The level of challenges the Department faces now around the
world are almost unprecedented. The return of great power
competition, the rise of authoritarianism, the collapse of
Afghanistan, addressing climate change, conflicts, leading a
global response to the pandemic and, most importantly,
assisting American citizens around the world.
In light of this, professional education and training must
be top priorities at the State Department and we must
strengthen the professionalism of our diplomats through a
vastly expanded career-long program of education and training
that focuses on the mastery of substantive foreign policy
issues, diplomatic expertise, and leadership.
There is also a critical need for increased preparation of
ambassadors and other senior leaders for their high-level
positions beyond the minimal 3-week training they receive,
known around the Department as the charm school, before
representing the United States at home and overseas.
The State Department must be seen as the lead agency in
executing American foreign policy overseas, ensuring that each
chief of mission's role is clear, paramount, safeguarded, and
unsalable.
I support the President's proposal to increase the budget
of the Department of State and USAID by 10 percent. If enacted,
and I hope it will be, this would provide the largest increase
in personnel in over a decade, allowing for more flexibility
and training and the much-needed training float that former
Secretary of State Colin Powell dreamed of so many years ago.
Yet, I wonder if it is enough. In order for the State
Department to make the changes that experts have called for and
that Secretary Blinken has acknowledged, the Department must
embrace a dramatic turnaround in its current culture.
This will require replacing the old culture that stalls
careers at mid-level and sees training as an impediment with a
new culture of education being career enhancing.
Employees and leaders throughout the Department must be
empowered to make these changes and given the resources to do
it. If handled correctly, we will see a State Department that
has transformed its approach to diplomacy, once again
positioning the United States as the leader in the
international arena.
With that, let me turn it over to my distinguished ranking
member, Senator Hagerty.
STATEMENT OF HON. BILL HAGERTY,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE
Senator Hagerty. Thank you very much, Chairman Cardin.
Thank you for convening this hearing and thank you for your
insightful and thoughtful remarks as we open up here.
I also want to recognize our witnesses. I know we have
broken this into two parts, but I am looking forward to a very
fruitful discussion and I appreciate your being here with us
today.
Before I begin, I would just like to say this. I am
disappointed that the Bureau of Global Talent Management did
not join us today. As a former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, I
recognize that the issues of training and personnel management
go hand in hand.
I hope to work with Senator Cardin to make significant
progress on personnel-related matters over the near future.
Today, we are focusing on the important subject of training in
the State Department's workforce.
In July, this subcommittee held a hearing on the topic of
modernizing the State Department for the 21st century. At that
time, all three of our witnesses agreed that change is
desperately needed at the State Department, and each of our
witnesses spent a considerable amount of time with us
discussing the need to improve training at the Department of
State.
We can all agree that the development of our diplomats,
their education, their training, their professionalization,
must be among the highest priorities for the State Department.
This is a particularly glaring problem considering that, in
my view, the State Department attracts some of the most
talented individuals in the United States Government. According
to a study, people join the State Department, on average, with
a graduate education and 11 years of work experience.
Yet, the same study noted that State, and I quote, ``treats
education as a prerequisite for hiring and not a continuing
requirement to prepare personnel for their subsequent
responsibilities.''
In essence, when diplomats come in the door, they are
treated as though they have the knowledge and skills necessary
for the profession, yet, really what they depend on, for the
most part, in terms of their leadership instruction is
mentoring from senior diplomats.
I think we can do better. As part of addressing the
training deficiency of the State Department, Secretary Blinken
specifically announced his intent to implement Secretary
Powell's idea for a training float that Senator Cardin just
mentioned, a set number of employees who are receiving
professional training at any given time, and structured in a
manner that does not sacrifice the State Department's
readiness.
I think that the idea, in principle, is something I
certainly support as well, but Congress should ask hard
questions and hold the Department accountable on personnel and
training-related issues.
I raise the point because Congress has provided the
Department with significant resources over the past 15 years,
enough resources to establish a training float. Since 2007, the
State Department has added a combined 3,500 Foreign Service and
Civil Service employees.
This amounts to approximately a 20 percent increase in the
number of employees over that period of time, and certainly
with a 20 percent increase in the number of Foreign and Civil
Service employees the Department could have faithfully
implemented Secretary Powell's vision for a training float with
15 percent of that workforce dedicated to training at all
times. Yet, here we are in 2021 attempting to address that same
issue.
To echo Senator Cardin's statement earlier, I look forward
to seeing a concrete plan on the issue from the State
Department. We will need to be bold in reimagining how the
department approaches training, recognizing that the Department
must embrace a new culture, just as Chairman Cardin said.
We must also incentivize and reward our diplomats to seek
further education and professional development opportunities,
and we must develop a cohesive program that identifies the
skills our diplomats will need as their responsibilities
escalate over the course of their careers.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about
this subject and to hear their specific recommendations to
improve training at the State Department.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cardin. Thank you, Senator Hagerty. I very much
appreciate your comments and your joint leadership of our
effort to make the State Department as strong and responsive as
we possibly can.
As I indicated earlier, we have two panels today. For all
the witnesses, your statements, without objection, will be made
part of our record and you will be able to proceed.
We ask you to stay within approximately 5 minutes in your
prepared remarks and leave time for questions.
It is my pleasure, first, to introduce in panel one,
Ambassador Joan Polaschik, a career member of the Senior
Foreign Service who is currently the Deputy Director of the
Department of State's Foreign Service Institute.
Ambassador Polaschik's career has focused on the Middle
East and North Africa, with assignments ranging from the U.S.
Ambassador to Algeria, and I understand I was present during
her confirmation hearing, to Director of the Office of Israel
and Palestinian Affairs. During her distinguished career she
also served in Libya, Jordan, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, and
Uzbekistan.
It is a real pleasure to have you before us and I will look
forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOAN POLASCHIK, DEPUTY DIRECTOR,
FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Polaschik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to
appear before you again.
Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Hagerty, members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you today. I have provided written testimony that outlines the
full range of measures the Foreign Service Institute has taken
to better prepare U.S. diplomats for the challenges of 21st
century diplomacy. I ask that my written statement also be
submitted for the record and will highlight a few key areas.
In this October 27 speech at the Foreign Service Institute,
also known as FSI, Secretary Blinken outlined his vision to
modernize American diplomacy, stressing the need to strengthen
the Department of State's expertise in areas that are
increasingly at the forefront of global affairs.
He identified climate change, public health, cyber issues,
and emerging technologies as areas of particular focus.
Training, of course, must be at the center of our efforts.
In support of the Secretary's initiative, FSI will launch a
new Cyber Diplomacy Tradecraft course that will cover U.S.
national security, human rights, and economic imperatives.
To enhance capacity to engage on climate change,
sustainability, and emerging technologies, FSI is conducting
needs assessments to identify training requirements. FSI also
is conducting a needs assessment to strengthen commercial
diplomacy training.
Separately, we are developing a mid-level course that will
strengthen the analytical, communication, and advocacy skills
of Foreign and Civil Service personnel.
With strong support from Congress, the Department of State
has invested heavily in recent years to improve what we train
and how we train. We are completing construction of a new
building at the National Foreign Affairs Training Center and
are upgrading FSI's three main educational management systems.
My written testimony highlights new curriculum in area
studies that we developed with Ambassador Miller and the U.S.
Diplomatic Studies Foundation, data analytics, information
technology, leadership, and orientation training, including the
One Team course that brings together all categories of State
Department employees for the first time ever to break down
barriers and instill values of respect and inclusion.
We partnered with external organizations on many of these
initiatives, including Harvard Business School, for the
Secretary's leadership seminar. We are leveraging the expertise
of the State Department's Office of the Historian, which moved
to FSI in 2019, and FSI's Center for the Study of the Conduct
of Diplomacy to bring real-world examples into the classroom.
We have conducted reviews of training for locally-employed
staff and of our language testing program, and are implementing
wide-ranging reforms in both areas. Outside the classroom, we
are working to bring information to people when and where they
need it through a new lecture series on global issues, as well
as on the intersection of technology and foreign affairs, and
regular webinars on leadership and resilience.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated our use of technology as
we shifted 94 percent of our course offerings into the virtual
world. We are assessing the lessons learned from this pivot to
emergency virtual instruction to determine which classes should
remain virtual and how we can further strengthen our overall
content and delivery. Virtual training has expanded our reach
and effectiveness.
As Secretary Blinken underscored, the State Department
needs a workforce that is representative of the United States
of America and an organizational culture anchored in
inclusiveness. In 2019, FSI launched Mitigating Unconscious
Bias Training, a course that helps employees become aware of
their own biases and begin addressing them. More than 17,000
people have taken the course.
Mitigating Unconscious Bias is a prerequisite for the State
Department's mandatory leadership courses and, in addition to
EEO training, is the foundation for diversity, equity,
inclusion, and accessibility modules in a range of courses.
In coordination with the Chief Diversity and Inclusion
Officer, we are launching a State Department wide assessment of
diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility training needs.
To accelerate our efforts, FSI established a new position,
the Senior Advisor for DEIA.
Mr. Chairman, preparing U.S. diplomats for the challenges
of 21st century diplomacy is a broad-based effort to which FSI
is deeply committed and which has the support of the
Department's senior leadership.
We are very grateful for the ongoing interest and support
of the Senate and of FSI's many partners. I look forward to
your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Polaschik follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ambassador Joan Polaschik
Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Hagerty, members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
As President Biden has emphasized, diplomacy must be the tool of
first resort of American leadership in an interconnected and
competitive world. In his October 27 speech at the Foreign Service
Institute (FSI), Secretary Blinken outlined his vision to modernize
American diplomacy, stressing the need to further strengthen and
institutionalize the Department of State's expertise in the areas that
will be increasingly at the forefront of global affairs. He identified
climate change, public health, cyber issues, and emerging technologies
as areas of particular focus. Training, of course, must be at the
center of our efforts to build and strengthen expertise in all these
areas.
In support of this modernization initiative, FSI will launch a new
cyber diplomacy tradecraft course next year that will cover a range of
international cyber issues affecting U.S. national security, human
rights, and economic imperatives. To enhance U.S. diplomatic skills and
abilities to engage on rapidly changing policy priorities such as
climate change, sustainability, and emerging technologies, FSI is
conducting full needs assessments of training options to develop a
broad range of courses in these areas. Similarly, FSI is conducting a
needs assessment to expand and strengthen its course offerings on
commercial diplomacy, ensuring foreign and civil service officers, as
well as locally employed staff, at all levels can effectively advocate
on behalf of U.S. commercial interests. We also are developing a mid-
level training course that will strengthen the analytical,
communication, and advocacy skills of Foreign and Civil Service
personnel and enhance their operational effectiveness in areas ranging
from multilateral diplomacy to working collaboratively with Congress.
We expect to offer that course next summer.
Thanks to strong support from Congress, the Department of State has
invested heavily in recent years in improving both what we train and
how we train.
We are completing construction of a new building at the National
Foreign Affairs Training Center that will provide state-of-the-art
facilities for our School of Professional and Area Studies and
Leadership and Management School and allow us to house the entire
School of Language Studies once again on our main campus. The new
facility also can double as much-needed space for major Department
conferences and events. We would welcome your visit to tour the site.
Separately, we are working internally within FSI and collaborating
with Department of State partners, such as the Chief Information
Officer and the Acting Under Secretary for Public Affairs, to build
``classrooms of the future.'' We are purchasing and launching three new
major educational management systems. One hosts online courses and
educational content to provide the latest technological training and
self-study development worldwide to our Foreign Service, Civil Service,
and Locally Employed Staff. Another system allows FSI to gather and
analyze student feedback about courses to constantly improve training.
The final system manages student registrations and records and
integrates them with personnel databases. These information technology
upgrades--replacing badly obsolete systems--will improve both our
internal administrative processes and the student experience, making
for an all-around better learning environment.
FSI is equally focused on strengthening the substance and delivery
of our training programs. In 2016, FSI developed and adopted new
policies and standards to bring adult education best practices into our
curriculum development, training evaluation, and educational technology
work. As a result, FSI embraced a more experiential approach to
training that has increased the effectiveness, relevance, reach, and
impact of our programs. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated our use of
technology in the classroom, as we shifted 575 of our 613 course
offerings--94 percent--into the virtual world. We are assessing the
lessons learned from our pivot to emergency virtual instruction, to
determine which classes should remain virtual or hybrid and how we can
further professionalize their content and delivery.
I'd like to highlight a few developments in our tradecraft,
diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), language, and
leadership training. I note that FSI's tradecraft, area studies, DEIA,
and leadership courses are open to both civil service and foreign
service employees, and we are working with the Global Talent Management
Bureau to further increase training opportunities for civil service
colleagues.
Starting in 2019, FSI completely revamped our flagship area studies
program. In partnership with the U.S. Diplomatic Studies Foundation, we
have developed entirely new curricula for our regional studies classes,
launched thematic global studies courses, and re-integrated area
studies with our long-term language training. We are developing
additional global studies courses focused on propaganda and
disinformation and social movements. Additionally, we've launched a
global issues speakers series that brings leading academics, via
virtual platforms, to engage the State Department workforce on topics
ranging from making the case for democratic renewal to how change
happens in societies. This hugely popular series, attracting an average
of 150 participants per session, is an example of how our new
initiatives bring information and training to people when and where
they need it.
In partnership with the State Department's Center for Data
Analytics, FSI developed a series of data literacy courses to support
the Department's efforts to bring data-driven decision-making into all
aspects of our foreign policy and internal operations. Since 2017,
2,981 employees have taken these courses. This training supports
implementation of the Department of State's new Enterprise Data
Strategy. As someone who has taken this training, I can attest that it
is highly effective in empowering non-technical employees to tackle
problems from an entirely new perspective.
Similarly, the rapidly changing information technology world
requires us to equip our IT professionals with new knowledge, skills,
and attitudes to better advance U.S. interests. To that end, FSI
developed a new suite of courses, Solutions@State, that empowers IT
professionals to contribute to whole-of-mission efforts to solve
problems. For example, IT professionals overseas now work with
political and economic officers to efficiently capture and track open-
source information on issues such as trafficking in persons or
sanctions violations. Given the critical importance of technology in
national security, our training breaks down the barriers between IT
experts and the generalists who need to advance technology policy
issues. In 2019, FSI launched a new Tech in Focus lecture series that
examines the relationship between emerging technology and foreign
affairs. Past topics have included artificial intelligence, quantum
computing, and the future of the internet. This year, Tech in Focus
will tackle U.S. leadership in emerging technology, the malicious use
of technology, and human rights. This lecture series is yet another
example of FSI relaying information to people when and where they need
it.
As Secretary Blinken underscored in his October 27 speech, the
State Department needs a workforce that is representative of the United
States of America and an organizational culture anchored in
inclusiveness. In 2019, the Foreign Service Institute developed and
launched Mitigating Unconscious Bias training, a foundational course
that helps employees become aware of their own inherent biases and
begin addressing them. More than 17,000 people have taken the course
in-person or in the distance-learning format. It is so well regarded
that three other federal agencies asked us to share the curriculum with
them. Mitigating Unconscious Bias is a prerequisite for the State
Department's mandatory leadership courses and, in addition to
longstanding mandatory EEO training, is the foundation for diversity,
equity, inclusion, and accessibility modules in our orientation,
consular, and executive-level leadership courses. Gender and LGBTQ
awareness have long been part of our curriculum, with courses on
``Promoting Gender Equality to Advance Foreign Policy'' and ``LGBT at
State,'' among others. We are launching a Department-wide assessment of
diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility training needs and,
although we can't predict the outcome at this point, expect that the
assessment will point to the need for further training, such as an
allyship or bystander training course. In support of both our training
agenda and our own, internal DEIA needs--particularly with respect to
recruitment, retention, and professional development--FSI established a
new position, the Senior Advisor for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and
Accessibility, and strengthened and formalized our DEIA Council, which
works with the Senior Advisor on programming for our staff and
students.
To further promote a culture of inclusiveness, we have made
significant changes to our orientation training. In 2019, FSI developed
and launched a pilot course, One Team, to break down barriers among the
Department's multiple employment categories and instill values of
respect and inclusion. One Team orientation training, which is open to
civil service, foreign service, locally employed staff, political
appointees, and contractors, has reached over 1,400 employees since its
launch and is now part of our regular course offerings, including
during the first week of mandatory Foreign Service orientation.
Since May 2020, we have conducted joint orientation programs for
Foreign Service generalists and specialists. This initiative, driven by
the exigencies of the pandemic, has created an environment in which all
Foreign Service employees understand the value of their colleagues'
work and see each other as equals.
We also are strengthening the training provided to the State
Department's 50,000 locally employed staff (LE staff). FSI conducted a
comprehensive review of local staff training in 2020, and we are now
working with the State Department's four regional training centers--
which provide the bulk of our LE staff training--to implement the
review's recommendations and increase the quality and reach of LE Staff
training. To that end, the Department has developed digital tools and
training plans that help LE Staff identify appropriate training courses
and meet professional development needs. FSI has leveraged virtual
training to expand the numbers of LE Staff who can participate in
training, overcoming the financial constraints that traditionally
limited in-person training.
Foreign language instruction has long been at the heart of FSI's
mission. Experience has shown that addressing foreign publics in their
own languages is highly effective in advancing America's interests in
all corners of the world. FSI provides instruction to an average of
5,000 students per year in more than 60 languages. The pandemic forced
us to convert all our training to the virtual world, adapting new
technologies and techniques to deliver our world-class training. As
health conditions permit, we are gradually phasing in more in-person
activities but plan to continue a hybrid model of instruction in the
future. Blended instruction will allow us to optimize the most
effective aspects of each mode of delivery, for example, by expanding
opportunities to connect with native speakers globally via virtual
platforms and completing hands-on and experiential task-based
activities in-person.
Secretary Powell's commitment to leadership training inspired
generations of U.S. diplomats, and FSI strives to live up to his
legacy. In this area, too, we have made important changes in recent
years. In October 2020, FSI launched the Department's redesigned
mandatory leadership courses. These redesigned courses provide
employees with a learning experience that is linked closer to the real-
world challenges they face on the job; address current and long-
standing leadership challenges; enhance feedback through a new
leadership 360 assessment; and provide progressive skill building and
continuity across the courses. Separately, with support from a private
philanthropist and in partnership with the Harvard Business School
(HBS), we launched a new mid-level professional development program in
2020, The Secretary's Leadership Seminar. The Seminar, which reaches 50
mid-level employees per year--divided equally between foreign service
and civil service--aims to develop a diverse group of emerging
enterprise leaders who will advance the mission of the Department by
taking innovative approaches to enterprise-wide challenges in an
inclusive and collaborative culture. The program provides these
employees with an opportunity to explore leadership though a private
sector lens and work with senior Department leaders and HBS to provide
innovative and creative solutions to Department challenges.
Partnerships with external organizations have been central to many
of our new programs and approaches. In addition to the work with the
U.S. Diplomatic Studies Foundation and the Harvard Business School that
I highlighted earlier, we have a long-standing partnership with the Una
Chapman Cox Foundation, which among other activities, provides funding
to FSI to assess emerging needs and develop pilot courses. Much of our
work on commercial diplomacy training, for example, is funded by the
Una Chapman Cox Foundation. We have further integrated export promotion
and commercial advocacy into training for our senior leaders, up to and
including ambassadors. Separately, the American Academy of Diplomacy
funded the creation of a new risk mitigation exercise that FSI now uses
for the Ambassadorial Seminar, to create an immersive environment for
prospective ambassadors to demonstrate and practice pre-crisis decision
making, including how to consider and draw upon resources available at
their Embassy and in Washington. We are planning on introducing a
version of this exercise for the deputy chief of mission/principal
officer seminar.
Finally, I'd like to highlight that, as part of the Department of
State's reorganization of its public affairs functions, the Office of
the Historian became part of the Foreign Service Institute in 2019.
This move increased FSI's capacity to include historical context and
lessons learned in training at every level and in every school. In
addition to its Congressional mandate to produce and publish the
Foreign Relations of the United States series, the Office of the
Historian recently created a new position for a senior historian and
project manager who will oversee development of training curricula for
a wide range of U.S. diplomatic history, foreign policy, and
institutional history courses and sessions to be delivered to FSI
students. This new position, along with FSI's Center for the Study of
the Conduct of Diplomacy, helps bring real world examples and case
studies--a critical component of experiential learning--to FSI
classrooms.
Underlying all these activities is a renewed focus on resilience
and taking care of our people. As Secretary Blinken recently remarked,
``We must take care of our people and their families--because the
bottom line is that it doesn't matter how much we invest or how much we
innovate if we can't retain, develop, and fully empower and utilize the
incredible talent and expertise we already have.'' FSI's Center of
Excellence for Foreign Affairs Resilience works to support employees
and their family members who are dealing with the trauma and stress of
a foreign affairs lifestyle. During the pandemic, we've increased our
enrollment in resilience and related workforce support offerings by 80
percent in 1 year (that includes an increase of over 10,000
participants) and shifted 95 percent of our services to the virtual
environment. We intend to keep the majority of our resilience offerings
virtual even as pandemic conditions improve, as it's clear this is a
more effective way to equip the workforce with tools where and when
they need it.
As you can see from this broad range of activities, preparing U.S.
diplomats for the challenges of 21st century diplomacy is a broad based
effort to which FSI is deeply committed and which has the support of
the Department's senior leadership. We are very grateful for the
ongoing interest and support of the U.S. Congress and of FSI's many
partners for this effort. Thank you for the opportunity to highlight
some examples of how FSI has adapted its programs and platforms to
better meet the needs of 21st century diplomacy. I look forward to your
questions.
Senator Cardin. Ambassador, thank you very much.
I wanted to ask you first about the Foreign Service
Institute as an institution and whether there are lessons to be
learned from the other institutions that we have that deal with
national security and similar types of issues such as the
National Defense University or the Army War College, or the
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown's University
School of Foreign Service.
Are there lessons to be learned? Is there coordination
between any of the programs that are offered at these different
institutions? How can we look at this from a coordinated point
of view to try to improve our capacity for career training?
Ms. Polaschik. Thank you, Senator. That is such an
important question and it is one that we are asking ourselves
every day.
I think you are probably familiar with what we call
National Security Memo No. 3, the directive issued by President
Biden on February 3 with a mandate to strengthen the national
security workforce, and the State Department is participating
in this interagency policy process.
At State we have FSI and the Bureau of Global Talent
Management in the lead, and we are looking long and hard at
what we do internally in terms of recruitment, hiring,
training, professional development, and sharing our experiences
and initiatives with the interagency community.
As part of that process, President Biden directed the
interagency to create a National Security Education Consortium,
and FSI has the lead on that for the State Department, and we
have had some initial meetings chaired by the National Security
Council. We are now in the process of working with our partners
at the Department of Defense to figure out how best we can
operationalize that vision from FSI's perspective, from the
State Department's perspective.
It would be extremely valuable to have a process whereby
all of the national security agencies can catalogue their
strengths and their weaknesses. We have started under the
leadership of the National Security Council to do that. So once
we identify those gaps we can look at ways that we could
partner with other agencies to share curriculum, to train the
trainers, hopefully, to make training more accessible across
the interagency.
We, of course, are constrained by the limits of U.S. law
and, for example, FSI is required to charge tuition to other
agencies for the trainings that we offer and I think it is a
vice versa arrangement.
There is a lot of thought going into this question now and
I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, that we are committed to
working with our partners to do all that we can to strengthen
training and professional development.
Senator Cardin. If the interagency cost issues become an
obstacle to further coordination and involvement and learning
from each other, please let us know because that is something,
obviously, Congress could rectify.
The bottom line cost is not going to be different. It is
just a matter of an accounting. If that is at all hampering the
cross-use of these facilities, we would want to know about
that.
As I understand it, you do not have a formal grading system
at the institute although you do rank proficiencies in foreign
language, which is one of the areas that we are deeply
concerned about, our competency in other languages.
I am just curious as to how you determine how effective
your programs are operating and how you evaluate for future
promotions those who have benefited from the program if there
is not a formal way of evaluating their progress.
Ms. Polaschik. We actually do grade some of our classes.
There are certain classes where people need to pass exams in
order, for example, to receive a consular commission. They have
to pass an exam at the end of the basic consular course.
There are also certain courses for people in order to have
a contracting officer's warrant, for example, to award
contracts and oversee grants. We have found, by the way, in
this virtual world where we are doing training quite
differently that people are passing those exams at higher rates
and with higher scores, which is fascinating.
Our takeaway--we are, of course, still assessing the
lessons learned--our takeaway is that this adoption of
something that is more like university style education where
people work on their own--reading, studying, and group
projects--and then come back together as a group it is helpful.
That is just a minor data point, but how do we evaluate
ourselves? We do it a lot. We do it every day. Beginning back
in 2016, FSI adopted new policies and standards which reflect
the best practices in adult education systems throughout the
United States--universities, our partner government training
institutions--and as part of these policies and standards, we
began using something called the Kirkpatrick Model evaluation.
There are four stages to that and two of them, basically,
are the feedback from the students when they have been in the
course. Did they feel that they were getting information
delivered in a positive way--it was helpful? Did they
understand what they needed to do to meet their learning
objectives to do their jobs?
Then we have a follow-on stage evaluation, phases three and
four, or levels three and four, that is after people are out in
the field. Let us say someone passed their consular course and
6 months later they are working in Azerbaijan, one of my
postings, and we will reach back out and we will ask them and
we will ask their supervisors how did the training do in terms
of preparing them to do their jobs. All of our programs
throughout the Foreign Service Institute are required to have
an annual evaluation plan and all of these four steps feed into
that.
Senator Cardin. I will ask one more question. Then I will
yield to Senator Hagerty, and that deals with the expertise in
different areas.
President Biden recognized that corruption is a core
national security interest. What capacity do we have in our
missions to understand the challenges of corruption in the host
country and to provide the type of information we need to
assess U.S. involvement in that country?
The same thing is true in climate change. The same thing is
true in so many different areas where we need to have that
local expertise in order to be able to carry out our missions.
There are a lot of different areas that we have expressed
concerns about over time. We have done this for trafficking in
humans. It has been an area that we have been involved in where
the local mission has a specific responsibility in our rating
systems.
Tell me how the training is focused on providing the type
of expertise in our missions to deal with the more complex
missions that we are now asking our missions to carry out.
Ms. Polaschik. Thank you, Senator. I know anti-corruption
is a huge priority for you and I recall in my confirmation
hearing you asked me to affirm that I would work on it, and I
am pleased to report that I did during my tenure in Algeria.
Senator Cardin. We are getting very close to passing
legislation that will set up a tier rating system. It has been
in both the House and Senate bills. We expect it may very well
be included in the National Defense Authorization Act. It is
going to be, I think, a requirement, and you are going to need
to have that capacity in mission.
Ms. Polaschik. Thanks for the heads up on that, and I am
pleased to report that we do have anti-corruption training. It
is a course that we developed with the Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement.
We also tackle issues related to anti-corruption in our
Political Economic Tradecraft course and also the training for
political economic chiefs. With the Bureau of European Affairs
over the last few years, we have done workshops, which are not
formal FSI training, but they are a really good way to get
information and skills to people in the field when they need it
and where they need it, and we are shifting to more of that
kind of a format in addition to FSI-hosted training.
To answer your broader question about how do we make sure
that people have the skills, the background, the expertise that
they need to deal with these 21st century challenges, it is a
hugely important question, and as I mentioned in my opening
remarks, we have been working on this for a while.
So we are about to roll out a new course on Cyber Diplomacy
Tradecraft that will start in January. This is brand new for
us. We are excited about that and we developed that with the
Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues.
I mentioned that we are also doing needs assessments now
for climate and emerging technology. We do offer training in
both those areas, but they are woven into specific courses.
So we know that we need to do more. Our first step in
accordance with our policies and standards is to talk to the
policymakers in the State Department, talk to people out in the
field. What do they need to know? We have to define the
business need and then build the training around that.
We also have a needs assessment underway right now of
commercial diplomacy training, which is a huge priority in the
foreign policy for the middle class and there is a separate GAO
review that we are eagerly awaiting the results for that and we
will use that then to strengthen our already robust commercial
advocacy training.
In the last couple of years, we have started training on
data analytics, which is a very important field and one that, I
think, admittedly, the State Department has not been great at
in the past, and so far we have trained 3,000 people there in
that area.
We have also developed new approaches to information
technology training. We have a course called Solutions at State
that is training our IT specialists not to think of themselves
as technicians but as consultants and problem solvers.
For instance, Mr. Chairman, you highlighted anti-
corruption. If we are working on that issue in an embassy
overseas, how can we leverage technology to read the newspapers
for us, to build the cases, to do something that it might take
a human weeks to do, but if we leverage technology we can do
that in a more effective way and, perhaps, a more rigorously
analytical way.
That is an area for growth, I think, leveraging artificial
intelligence. We also have developed new courses in our Global
Area Studies program that focus on these cross-cutting issues,
and lecture series, again, so we can bring information to
people when and where they need it.
We have a Global Area Studies issue speaker series, and
also technology and focus, which is another area we are trying
to merge technical information with foreign affairs generalists
so that people can understand these broad-brush issues, and
they have been very popular.
Senator Cardin. Thank you for that information. It is
really helpful.
Senator Hagerty.
Senator Hagerty. Thank you so much, Senator Cardin.
Ambassador Polaschik, I would like to come back to a quote
from Ambassadors Bill Burns and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, if I
might.
In 2020, they published an article in Foreign Affairs
criticizing the lack of, and I quote, ``A rigorous doctrinal
approach to the art of diplomacy in the State Department.'' I
agree with their assessment, considering the State Department
does not provide or require mandatory training on the very
basic fundamentals of American diplomacy.
Former Secretary of State George Schultz advocated for all
incoming State Department employees to spend a full academic
year of professional education to address this problem.
From my perspective, beyond entry level training and as a
business person, I feel certain that we would benefit from
education for mid- to senior-level employees as well.
Ambassador, do you agree that the State Department should
require all employees, both Foreign and Civil Service, to
receive a more rigorous doctrinal approach to the art of
diplomacy and that they do this through varied points as their
career advances?
Ms. Polaschik. Senator, I do agree, and this is something
that I personally began working on almost 2 years ago when I
joined the FSI team as the dean of the School of Professional
and Area Studies.
Like you, I really deeply regretted the opportunities for
more training between that entry level and the ambassadorial
level, and we have been working hard to address that challenge.
We have a new pilot course in the works, mid-level training
and, again, using that business model where we have gone out to
our customers--policy practitioners in the field, the heads of
regional bureaus--to ask them what do they see as the gaps in
our mid-level workforce. This is Foreign Service and Civil
Service together, by the way.
We have identified strategic analysis, effective
communication with a range of audiences, effective adaptation
to various operating environments, and mentoring subordinates
as key gaps.
So we are developing a week-long course that will address
those gaps and also interlocking modules in both the hard
skills, negotiations, and also these new areas that people need
to become familiar with, whether it is climate or emerging
technologies, to build out a curriculum.
We are really excited about it. We will launch the pilot
next summer, and we are also talking with the Bureau of Global
Talent Management about how we could operationalize this.
Both of you highlighted the training float, and God rest
Secretary Powell's soul. He left such an important legacy for
the State Department in terms of his commitment not just to
training, but to the people of the Department.
We hoped--I mean, FSI--we had really hoped to live up to
that legacy and look at ways that we could create some
meaningful professional development for that training float
once we fully have it in place.
I think you are familiar with Secretary Blinken's request
that we add 500 people in the coming year, including a first
ever 100-person Civil Service training float.
This will come incrementally with time, and as we build out
this pilot course and, hopefully, have support from the Senate
and the House of Representatives to fund it, I think there is
quite a lot of exciting work that we could do to build that
capacity at the mid-level and beyond.
Senator Hagerty. I appreciate the direction that you are
articulating. I also note that it is not going to be easy if
you think about the operational aspects of this. Just think
about the housing component itself.
It frustrated me to no end waiting on staff because we did
not have the overlapping housing capacity to deal with the fact
that folks really did need to overlap, but we did not have the
housing capacity for them to do it.
I am certain that that is part of the aspect that you are
focused on.
I am also curious what sort of metrics or standards that
you would use, what you would apply, to know that you are being
successful as you develop this curriculum.
Ms. Polaschik. We would use the same Kirkpatrick level of
evaluations. What we do is we look at the learning objectives
that are set as part of the course development process and then
see how we are meeting them. Again, it is feedback, first from
the students in the classroom, but then once people are out in
the field 6 months later has this really enhanced their
capacity to perform effectively.
Senator Hagerty. Let me turn to another area here quickly,
if I might, and talk to you about what I perceive is a relative
issue with the State Department versus other agencies that deal
with national security.
I want to just share some statistics with you for a minute
because I think it underscores the difference in terms of
emphasis that the State Department puts on hard training versus
language training.
There is a great deal of emphasis, as you know, on language
training, but according to U.S. Diplomatic Studies Foundation,
the State Department provides only 6 weeks of nonresidential
nonlanguage training.
By comparison, the CIA provides 6 months of residential
nonlanguage training. The FBI provides 20 weeks of residential
nonlanguage training. The DEA provides 20 weeks of residential
nonlanguage training, and Army officers spend 6 months in
officers' training course in addition to basic training beyond
language training. The length of training, I think, likely
reflects the priority that the organization places on the
tenets of and the art of diplomacy or the activity in their
department.
In your view, do you see the discrepancy there? Do you have
a sense that we have a lot of room to cover?
Ms. Polaschik. Senator, it is a complicated comparison to
make, and I would note that one thing that came very clear to
me through our discussions with the interagency as we were
working on this National Security Education Consortium is that
every agency has a unique mandate and unique training needs
associated with that mandate.
I would disagree with the information put forward by the
U.S. Diplomatic Studies Foundation. Yes, our basic orientation
course for a Foreign Service officer or a specialist is 6
weeks, but beyond that 6 weeks, there is a heck of a lot more.
To take my own case, which was admittedly quite some time
ago, when I joined I then went into training that was specific
to my onward assignment, my first assignment.
I did the orientation class. I did 3 months of GSO
training, 6 weeks of consular training and then 4 weeks of top-
up Russian.
I was actually at the Foreign Service Institute for almost
a full year. It was 10 months before I went out to my first
assignment, and that is actually quite typical.
The 6 months of general training that a U.S. Army officer
gets is actually pretty comparable to what a U.S. Foreign
Service officer will get before she or he deploys to the field.
Something that I think is a challenge in our system is that
we train to the specific assignment that is coming. We do not
have, for instance, an expectation that a U.S. diplomat must
study negotiations.
I love to share this example. I had been in the business
for 26 years when I first joined the FSI team and I only
learned then that we teach negotiations, which is pretty
shocking.
That is why I feel that this mid-level course is so
important because there are things that we teach at FSI and we
teach it well, but because of the way that our personnel system
is set up, our assignment system, so that you take training
really only that is needed for a specific assignment, we miss
out on some of those.
We hope to rectify this with the creation of the mid-level
training course and the development of the training float so we
actually have the time and the space to allow people to train
effectively, not just for the particular job, but for a career.
Senator Hagerty. I will share this with you after the
meeting, but I have got some statistics here titled ``The Five-
Year Workforce Plan'' for FYs 2019 through 2023 for the State
Department, and it shows the overwhelming weight of training
going toward language and a much smaller portion going toward
tradecraft or area studies or learning how to supervise.
Again, back to the balance of training, I would just argue,
again, as a business person that those other components are
terribly critical. I had the benefit of serving in a post that
had a tough language, but I also felt that we suffered when the
language requirements were erected so high that language
proficiency became far more important to get to post than, for
example, management proficiency.
I think striking a balance there will be critically
important. Thank you.
Ms. Polaschik. Senator, may I address that point?
Senator Hagerty. Sure.
Ms. Polaschik. I would like to unpack it a little bit. Yes,
when you look at the Foreign Service Institute's budget, the
language school is the behemoth, but that is because the State
Department has prioritized language training for a number of
positions, and we look at that very carefully.
Every 3 years there is a triennial language review, and
leadership from embassies overseas, the regional bureaus, make
the decision about what level of language proficiency is
needed.
Having served most of my career in places where people do
not speak English, I personally can attest that it has been
incredibly valuable to be able to communicate with host
government officials, civil society leaders, the general
public, in their own language, but, actually, our language
students are the minority. I mean, the budget is quite a lot
because it costs a lot to do that language training. For
instance, in FY20, FSI had 69,356 students. Only 5,000 of them
were language students.
They are there for the longer-term training, but 64,356
other people pass through our halls--our virtual halls, in some
cases--for a wide array of tradecraft courses.
We do quite a lot, but just--the budget does not
necessarily reflect that.
Senator Hagerty. I just--I will encourage--and we will
spend some time after this--to look at that balance again. I
served at a post where the post itself made the
recommendations, I think, in a way that tends to be self-
reinforcing.
The post I served at they called the Chrysanthemum Club,
and the lack of fluency in Japanese, for example, at that post
became a barrier to getting what I thought were the type of
qualifications, the type of individuals I needed.
For example, Japan is the third largest economy in the
world after the U.S. and China. Yet, I had zero business
degrees in that embassy. There has got to be a balance struck
here, and I look forward to talking with you more about it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cardin. Senator Hagerty raises a couple issues as
to how you make decisions on mid-level as to who can get the
training. As you indicate, you do not get the training until
you need it in your assignment.
If it is not identified or the person cannot find a place,
then we are going to be without capacity in the mission because
of that, or if we do not have someone to fill in and we cannot
afford to allow a person to leave for training, it also means
that you are going to see a situation, perhaps in the Japanese
mission, where we do not have the individual trained as highly
as we needed to in the economic or trade mission.
I think it does raise questions as how you make those
decisions.
Ms. Polaschik. I would like to address the issue that you
just raised, Mr. Chairman, which is so important in terms of
gaps and how we actually get people to training.
One of our great lessons learned from COVID is that we do
not need to fly people back to Washington to do training
effectively.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we have converted 94
percent of our course offerings to the virtual world. That
means if someone is sitting in Mission Japan and they have not
had a chance to take Commercial Advocacy training before they
got to post, they can do it while they are working in Tokyo or
one of the consulates with much less investment of time because
they do not have to have the travel time and at much less cost
to the U.S. Government.
We are working now on trying to figure out the right
balance in the future, what do we need to really offer in-
person at the FSI campus and what should we keep virtual, and I
think in many cases, we are leaning to keeping a mix of some
in-person and some virtual, for example, with Commercial
Advocacy training, because if people are going to be here in
between assignments, they would benefit from in-person
training. If they cannot fit that into their schedule, we can
get it to them where they are in the field when they need it.
Senator Hagerty. Mr. Chairman, I might just add one point
to the issue you raised, and I applaud your point, Ambassador.
Technology and the realization that we have come to over the
past year and a half, 2 years, may present a real opportunity
here as we look at prioritizing the needs and the deficiencies
that I saw in the old way of how we did this.
Senator Cardin. Senator Hagerty's observation as an
ambassador has been reinforced by a lot of what I have heard as
I have traveled to different missions around the world about
getting trained individuals in the areas of great need in that
mission.
I recognize you are doing everything you can to fill the
void, which brings us, of course, to if you are going to have a
physical presence then you need to have the pool of positions
in order to fill those.
You mentioned the budget includes 500. Where did that
number come from?
Ms. Polaschik. Mr. Chairman, I would have to take that
question back because our----
Senator Cardin. I thought you might, because I have heard
numbers as high as 2,000 that are needed.
Ms. Polaschik. Yes.
Senator Cardin. I recognize the pragmatic issue of how
budgets and there are also transition issues, but I was just
wondering if there is a rationale for 500.
Ms. Polaschik. I can share the FSI side of it and I would,
again, have to defer to colleagues on the GTM side of the
house.
As we were building our FY23 budget request, we looked long
and hard at what we needed just to make our current training
float whole because, in fact, we do have positions that are
built to be sort of a training float--that is our long-term
language training that Senator Hagerty just mentioned--and
actually the way that we have been staffed, unfortunately, in
recent years, we have not even been at that full minimal
training float.
The initial figures are to make us whole and also to build
out more opportunities for long-term professional development
and training.
Every year, the Foreign Service--actually the State
Department, writ large, sends 100 people out for long-term
training. So adding 100 Civil Service professional development
and training float positions would allow us to do even more,
and those long-term trainings are at the National Defense
University, at nongovernmental universities. We have positions
at Princeton and Stanford and it is a wonderful opportunity for
our colleagues.
Senator Cardin. I am going to turn the gavel over to
Senator Kaine. There is a second vote that is on the floor that
Senator Hagerty and I are both going to have to at some point
go to cast our votes.
Senator Kaine, when you finish your questioning, if you
want to go to the next panel you may. There is no other person
in line, and we have the information on that I will leave with
you.
Thank you.
Senator Kaine [presiding]. Both of you have done your
questions already? Okay, great. Thank you. Let me find my place
in my notes, having just walked in.
One of the things that I like doing as a member of the
Foreign Relations Committee is when I travel to other
countries, I usually ask to meet with first- and second-term
FSOs without the Ambassador present. That makes some of the
ambassadors nervous.
I tell them this is not to ask them what they think about
you, and I usually then congratulate these FSOs. I say you have
achieved a job that is really hard to get, and then I ask this
question, ``What will make you decide to either stay with the
State Department for your entire career or what might make you
decide to do something different?''
I hardly have to say anything more than that to guarantee
an hour-and-a-half or a 2-hour-long discussion as people talk
about the joys and the challenges of life working in the
Foreign Service of the United States.
My observations over the years, and we have had committee
testimony to this effect, is that other nations are now
investing more in their sort of Foreign Service professionals
than we are.
This might have already been addressed in the questions
that have been asked, but how can we do a better job in
attracting the best, but then maybe also the retention issue
has been a significant one and maybe particularly the retention
of a diverse workforce. The State Department needs to be more
diverse, and I think sometimes the retention of diverse Foreign
Service professionals is particularly challenging.
I would love it if you might address that.
Ms. Polaschik. Thank you, Senator, for that question and
for your support of our entry-level colleagues and colleagues
at every level. We really appreciate it.
We talked earlier with the chairman and Senator Hagerty
about a mid-level training program, a pilot that we have
underway at FSI, because, like you, we have been very concerned
about the gaps that exist in our training program between the
entry level and then the more senior positions.
So back in 2020, I asked our team to start talking with our
clients, basically, the regional bureaus, folks out in the
field, what do they see is the gaps and they identified four
areas that deal primarily with analysis, communications--
working with the Hill is one of them--and mentoring others.
So we are developing a new 5-day pilot course that should
address those gaps, but it is not just those skills. It is also
looking at these new areas that 21st century diplomats need to
understand and be able to work effectively: climate change,
emerging technology, multilateral institutions, et cetera.
We see this course plus interlocking modules as a way to
build capacity. In fact, many of those courses we already
offer. It is just that people do not really necessarily have
the time to take them because it is constantly this rotation.
The training float that Secretary Blinken hopes to create
should address some of those needs to give people the time and
space to build their skills and train.
I just wanted to add, with respect to diversity, equity,
inclusion, and accessibility, we have done a lot in recent
years. We launched a new course in 2019, Mitigating Unconscious
Bias, which is a foundational course so people can become aware
of their own inherent biases and begin addressing them.
We are doing a needs assessment now to look at State
Department wide DEIA training needs and we have also hired a
new senior advisor for DEIA to accelerate our efforts. We are
also building out our organizational development coaching
program. That was a very strong ask from our State Department
employee affinity groups so that they would feel more
supported.
We also have a new mid-level leadership program, the
Secretary's Leadership Seminar, that we launched with Harvard
Business School, which is pretty cool, and we relied on a
private philanthropist for support for that.
When we had the graduation of the first cohort in
September, I heard so many mid-level officers, both Civil
Service and Foreign Service, say to me, ``I feel valued as a
result of that course.'' So I think looking at ways that we can
support people with programs like that where they feel valued
will be really important to stopping the attrition.
Senator Kaine. Ambassador Polaschik, let me ask you another
question, and, again, it may have been covered in the previous
questions as I was voting.
The Belfer Center talks about the study--and I know we will
hear more about this in panel two--about the need to expand the
size of our Foreign Service corps by at least 2,000 positions,
maybe as many as 380.
My understanding is the FY22 budget does begin down that
path with a proposal of nearly 500 in some of the areas you
just mentioned--more expertise in China, Indo-Pacific, climate,
global health, responding to some current concerns.
Do you have an understanding about is the 485 part of a 5-
year plan to get to 2,000 or get to 1,500? What is your
understanding about that kind of path that State and the
Administration may be intending to go in future years?
Ms. Polaschik. Sorry. I turned myself off.
I will take that question back for our colleagues in the
Global Talent Management Bureau, but I was involved in the
discussions as we were building out the '22 and '23 budget, and
our idea is, as you said, to do this incrementally, because we,
first, need to make ourselves whole in terms of filling our
existing training float because we are not even there now, and
then building in more and having Civil Service colleagues as
part of that is really important because the way our Civil
Service corps is structured right now they do not have the same
flexibility and ability to go in and out for, let us say, a
year-long detail on the Hill as a professional development
opportunity.
Senator Kaine. Thank you. I have no further questions,
Ambassador Polaschik. I am very happy to have you here and I
would be very happy now to welcome our next two witnesses. If
you might come up, and we will just take a brief break as
Joshua Marcuse and David Miller come.
Ambassador, thank you very, very much for serving in such
an important role.
Just as the panel is shifting and we are bringing up panel
two, sometimes we just omit to explain to the public. I have
two panels. Three people can sit at the table and this is
designed as a hearing on this very important topic, the State
Department workforce for the 21st century.
The first panel is a little bit the--not necessarily the
party line, but what is the State Department's thought and the
Ambassador is a current member of the State Department
professional Foreign Service--that is panel one.
Panel two are experts who care very deeply about this. They
are not part of the current State Department. They have had
experience in State Department issues, but they offer not an
administration or State Department position, but their own
position, given their expertise. It is helpful to the committee
to hear both from inside the Administration, but outside
experts as well and that is why we have set the panel up in
this way.
Let us see. I have my panel members. Go ahead and have a
seat, if you will, and as you do I will introduce you and it
may be by the time I finish the introductions and then you
finish your testimony both Senators Cardin and Hagerty will
return.
Joshua Marcuse--Joshua is the head of Strategy and
Innovation for Global Public Sector at Google Cloud. He
previously served as the executive director for the Defense
Innovation Board, which is a group focused on bringing
technological and organizational innovation and business
practices of Silicon Valley to the Department of Defense.
He was the information adviser to the CTO, Chief Technology
Officer, at the Department of Defense and also held roles in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, Personnel
Readiness, and Chief Management Officer. He has also worked at
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Booz Allen
Hamilton, and connected to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Joshua, thank you for being here today.
Our second witness on panel two is Ambassador David Miller,
partner and founding investor of Torch Hill Capital, LLC, a
private equity firm. In private sector, he has worked for a
decade in international positions at Westinghouse.
Ambassador Miller was the Special Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs on the National
Security Council staff in the White House from January 1989
until December 1990. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania
from 1981 to 1984, and to Zimbabwe from 1984 to 1986.
Following a year in Vietnam working on projects primarily
for ARPA, he was selected as a White House Fellow in 1968 and
1969, and he has had extensive experience working both in and
out of government. He is a member of the Council of Foreign
Relations and also the District of Columbia Bar.
If I could ask each of you to testify, try to keep your
testimony to 5 minutes. Mr. Marcuse, I will begin with you and
then Ambassador Miller.
Is your mic on? No, it is not. I wonder if we have----
Mr. Marcuse. Is that better?
Senator Kaine. That is much better.
STATEMENT OF JOSHUA MARCUSE, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DEFENSE
INNOVATION BOARD, CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN OF NGO-GLOBALLY,
WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Marcuse. Senator Kaine, Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member
Hagerty, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank
you for the invitation to testify today.
I am here solely in my capacity as a private citizen, not
representing any organization, especially not the Department of
Defense, where I had the privilege to serve as a civilian for
more than a decade until March 2020.
Unlike the distinguished ambassadors here today, I have
never had the honor of serving in the Department of State. I
can only offer the impressions of a well-intentioned outsider
humbly submitted with the utmost respect for my colleagues.
At their finest, there is no tool of foreign relations more
powerful than the ingenuity, versatility, and resolve of
America's diplomats. Yet, the State personnel with whom I spoke
described an organization that, to them, feels rigid,
hierarchical, risk averse, a culture that is nostalgic and
stagnating, and employees who are discouraged.
Surely, the truth is more nuanced. Nevertheless, now is the
moment for a cultural renewal in our State Department
workforce. To usher in this renewal I suggest three
observations.
First, modernizing training alone is inadequate. A holistic
approach is needed to foster an organizational culture fit for
the 21st century. FSI should be commended for its substantial
efforts to modernize training, but we must ask ourselves how
might all State Department leaders intentionally construct a
learning culture, one where people are encouraged to
experiment, to innovate, and to adapt?
Second, we need a new paradigm of diplomacy necessitating a
relook at curriculum for an increasingly digital world and new
generations of the workforce.
Third, the delivery mechanisms for training will require
overhaul rather than incremental improvements. The dominant
modes of professional development have changed radically in the
commercial world and academia.
There are more ways than ever to deliver rich multimedia
interactive content to a globally-distributed user base. Based
on these observations, I suggest seven recommendations.
First, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and
Resources should establish a State Department Chief Learning
Officer, a senior leader with a small team dedicated to
promoting a learning culture.
Next, the State Department should create a network of
designated individuals at every bureau and embassy to be
responsible for learning and training.
USAID's Bureau of Policy Planning and Learning offers an
example to follow. Their continuous learning and adaptation
initiatives should probably be expanded statewide.
Second, the State Department should aggressively pursue
diverse outside perspectives. DoD benefited from the
establishment of a robust Defense Innovation Board in 2016,
which enjoyed bipartisan support from Obama and Trump
administrations. Perhaps the State Department should explore
creating its own version, a Diplomacy Innovation Board.
Third, the State Department should embrace digital
competencies. The Defense Innovation Board recommended DoD to
prioritize five focus areas: design thinking, lean startup,
agile software development, data science, and innovation
management. Subsequent reports emphasized machine learning and
artificial intelligence.
State should increase its collaboration and training with
providers outside of the Government where much of that needed
resources and expertise are concentrated.
Fourth, the State Department should support homegrown
innovation efforts. When I served in government, I was aware of
three impactful grassroots initiatives at State: the
Collaboratory, the Strategy Lab, and Tech at State. The
Strategy Lab and Tech at State did not survive and the work of
the Collaboratory has migrated to other units possibly due to
budget constraints or changing priorities.
These are the types of efforts that should be receiving
more support and attention, not less.
Fifth, the State Department should establish executive
exchange programs to attract outside expertise and offer State
personnel broadening experiences outside. For example, DoD
effectively harnessed its tech talent by establishing a Defense
Digital Service. It is time for a State Digital Service.
Sixth, the State Department should increase the use of
exercises, simulations, and experiments. FSI has made steady
progress towards integrating scenario-based training into
curricula but there are further opportunities to explore. As an
interim measure, more State Department staff should be invited
to participate in DoD exercises.
Seventh, the State Department must embrace a learning
paradigm that makes emerging technology a priority, not an
afterthought, in reimagining training and education. This will
require significant resources so sustained bipartisan
congressional leadership is needed.
This view is, broadly, consistent with the recommendations
put forth by Representative Young Kim in her amendment.
In the near future, FSI world must exist equally in the
virtual world and the physical world. There are profound
implications of these technologies. Learning does not occur at
a set place and a set time, but is possible everywhere and at
all times.
FSI can better serve State's entire global workforce with
on-demand learning for the lifespan of employment to, perhaps,
even after.
In conclusion, we need to preserve what the State
Department has done right over the last century--to train
generations of inspirational leaders, to represent our values
and our interests abroad, but at the same time, we must boldly
experiment with new concepts and practices that will innovate
the diplomatic mission.
Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Hagerty, Member Kaine, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for giving me the
opportunity to provide my perspective today. I look forward to
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Marcuse follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joshua J. Marcuse
Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Hagerty, and distinguished members
of this subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to testify today. I
am honored to be able to share my perspective on ``Training the
Department of State's Workforce for 21st-Century Diplomacy.'' I offer
my views solely in my capacity as a private citizen, representing no
other organization, particularly not the Department of Defense, where I
had the privilege to serve as a civilian for more than a decade.
However, the observations and proposals I will share today are informed
by my experience leading the Defense Innovation Board, and several DoD
and federal-wide projects related to human capital, professional
development, and organizational change--both in the Government and in
collaboration with the Partnership for Public Service. In addition, I
have established or served as an advisor to multiple nonprofit
organizations devoted to developing emerging global leaders. These non-
governmental organizations have afforded me the opportunity to receive
the unfiltered views of hundreds of public servants, quite a few of
them from the Department of State. While I do not purport to speak for
anyone else, I will endeavor to do justice to them and their
experiences.
I also must begin by acknowledging that unlike the distinguished
ambassadors who have served as witnesses, I have never had the honor of
serving in the State Department. While my views are informed by and in
harmony with studies on foreign service modernization such as the
insightful report by my fellow witness, Revitalizing State--Closing the
Educational Gap (https://afsa.org/revitalizing-state-closing-education-
gap),\1\ and that of my colleagues at the Truman National Security
Project, Transforming the State Department into a More Just, Equitable,
and Innovative Institution (https://assets-global.website-files.com/
60b7dbd50474
252e6c8c4fc5/60f5acf9dcd30575c7386ab1_Truman-Center-Task-Force-
Transforming-State-Final.pdf),\2\ I can only offer the impressions of a
well-intentioned outsider. I offer these comments humbly in the spirit
of collaboration.
The State Department has developed many inspiring leaders who have
tackled the world's most complex geopolitical and humanitarian
problems--often prevailing against the odds, leading in ambiguity,
toiling in obscurity, rarely with adequate resources, and often in
harm's way. Many of our diplomats and civil servants are quick
learners, resourceful, and resilient. At their finest, there is no tool
of foreign relations more powerful than the skill, integrity,
versatility, and resolve of America's diplomats.
Yet, fewer and fewer of the State personnel with whom I spoke
believe these qualities are the norm. Fewer of them seem to believe
State's best days are ahead of them. Many describe an organization
that, to them, feels rigid, hierarchical, parochial, and risk-averse; a
culture that is nostalgic and stagnating; leaders who are anxious;
employees who are disengaged.
The truth is surely more nuanced; for example, State's Federal
Employee Viewpoint Scores (FEVS) showed a slight improvement in
satisfaction this year.\3\ Nevertheless, now is the moment for a
cultural renewal in our State Department workforce. Like so many of our
government institutions, the overall pace of adaptation has slowed,
while all around us the pace of change appears to be accelerating.
General C.Q. Brown, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force recently said
to his workforce, ``accelerate change or lose.'' That is an example of
what urgency feels like.
In the last 2 years, the State workforce has faced a global
pandemic, cyber attack, climate crises, global supply chain shocks,
humanitarian emergencies in every region, on top of escalating great
power competition and unhelpful politicization of its non-partisan
role. To meet these challenges, we need to accept three premises, each
of which I will discuss briefly:
First, modernizing training alone is inadequate; a holistic
approach is needed to foster a State Department culture fit for
the 21st Century. Improving training and education are a
crucial lever to pull, along with others.
Second, the aforementioned global challenges require new
paradigms of foreign service, necessitating a relook at
curriculum content, not just delivery mechanisms. State has
begun this, but there is probably more to be done.
Third, the delivery mechanisms for training will require a
significant overhaul rather than incremental improvements. The
dominant modes of education, training, and professional
development have changed radically in the commercial world and
even in academia, and so too must they evolve in the Federal
Government generally and State specifically.
I believe that all three of these foundational observations are
true of the Department of Defense as well. In some cases, DoD has
recognized this and made progress, though much remains to be done.
Where possible, I hope to suggest some lessons by analogy.
part 1: creating a learning culture at state
Peter Drucker, the late legendary management consultant, is known
for the adage, ``culture eats strategy for breakfast.'' Had Drucker
been invited to testify today he would have gone on to say that culture
also eats training for a mid-morning snack. By this I mean that when we
take State employees out of their work environment, their leadership
chain, their promotion incentives, and other explicit norms and
unconscious biases, and put them in a training classroom, very little
that happens in that classroom will survive once they return. To
prepare State's workforce for 21st Century Diplomacy absolutely depends
on modernizing training--which is important--but we must look beyond
that problem framing to explore the State Department's culture, and ask
ourselves how might State Department leaders intentionally construct a
learning culture? Or put another way, how could State become a Learning
Organization?
``Learning Organization'' is a term defined by management theorist
Peter Senge in his bestseller The Fifth Discipline as a group of people
working together collectively to enhance their capacities to create
results they really care about.\4\ Learning Organizations can be large
bureaucracies, but they take on some of the qualities of startups: they
are constantly sensing their environment, conducting small experiments,
and adapting how they operate. They place a premium on learning and
curiosity as core organizational and individual values. Whereas some
organizations optimize for execution and efficiency, Learning
Organizations also emphasize discovery, agility, and evolution. Gen.
Stan McChrystal writes about this beautifully in his book Team of
Teams,\5\ chronicling how Joint Special Operations Command had to
rapidly evolve in response to Al Qaeda.
Learning Organizations are known for innovation. They tend to grant
managers greater autonomy, and--as Harvard psychologist Amy Edmonson
has researched for decades--their managers give their employees a sense
of psychological safety.\6\ Edmonson defined team psychological safety
as a ``a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe
for interpersonal risk taking.'' That is to say that teammates feel
comfortable disagreeing and debating, respectfully challenging
assumptions, asking for help, and believe that failures are
opportunities for learning and growth. Wharton professor Adam Grant,
who incidentally co-led the Workforce Subcommittee of the Defense
Innovation Board, has pointed out that psychological safety is
essentially a necessary precursor for innovation.
Employees are freed up from worry about saving face or getting
credit to focus on the mission. Learning organizations encourage
employees to have what Carol Dweck described as a growth mindset.\7\
They are rewarded not only for excellence, effort, or time-in-grade,
but for curiosity, intrapreneurship, and adaptation. When the
subcommittee asks how we can prepare the State Department workforce for
the 21st century, the answer is not by improving training alone, but by
challenging the leadership of the State Department to undertake a
coordinated campaign to turn the State Department into a Learning
Organization.
Cultures take time to change; it takes time and sustained
involvement from leadership, which is why bipartisan congressional
support is essential. I recommend that State's leadership should
consider three specific actions as part of that campaign:
First, ask the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and
Resources to establish a State Department Chief Learning
Officer (CLO) with a small team under her or him to work
continuously to promote this agenda. (This individual should
not be the Director of the Foreign Service Institute.) The Navy
was the first service to establish a CLO, and hired John
Kroger, the former President of Reed College for the post.
Kroger's experience was not without challenges,\8\ and the
whole premise of establishing CXOs to solve organizational
problems justifiably has its critics, but in government, naming
an individual tends to concentrate attention, resources, and
accountability. So this is a good start, and would certainly
signal a recognition of the problem.
Next, the State Department should designate an individual to
be responsible for learning and training at every bureau and
embassy. These individuals should be organized into a network
on platforms (such as Slack) that can exchange observations,
share resources, and provide mutual support in real time. DoD
has a DoD Chief Learning Officers Council (DCLOC) led by an OSD
CLO--admittedly not at the right level of seniority--but it's a
start. Naming individuals in many operating units is crucially
important because learning is not something that happens only
in a classroom at the Foreign Service Institute. Learning--and
training--must happen on the job, on the frontlines, in the
core of the work, and therefore become embedded in culture and
in practice.
Second, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and
Resources should look hard at the USAID Bureau for Policy,
Planning and Learning. Having an organization dedicated to
Learning has--by all accounts I have heard--served USAID quite
well. This team has a dynamic initiative called Continuous
Learning and Adaptation (CLA), and they invest strategically in
data collection and analysis, operate an excellent website
called USAID Learning Lab \9\ for sharing best practices, and
work assiduously to promote evidence-based practices and
decision making. Expanding this effort State-wide would make a
lot of sense; I suspect the function could be embedded under
the Under Secretary for Management.
Third, the State Department should aggressively pursue
diverse outside perspectives. Welcoming outside views and
external benchmarking are essential to challenging status quo
thinking and stoking creativity. One thing that has had a
dramatically positive effect on the DoD was the establishment
of a robust Defense Innovation Board in 2016, which enjoyed
bipartisan support from both the Obama and Trump
administrations. Perhaps the State Department should explore
creating its own version--a Diplomacy Innovation Board--that
would provide independent, pathbreaking recommendations to
encourage innovative best practices throughout the Department,
especially from industry. The State Department has 19 advisory
committees, but really none that serve this purpose.
part 2: embracing new paradigms of foreign service
A common critique leveled against the military is that it trains to
fight the last war; or a corollary critique: it prepares for the wars
it wants to fight. In a similar vein, the Foreign Service Institute
(FSI) is optimized for foreign service officers, and often led by
previous generations of FSOs, so it is likely to be shaped by both the
benefits and constraints of past experience. There are roles and
functions for which FSI likely remains ideal, but there are new roles
and functions for which it must adapt. In the same way, the U.S. Army
is still the best in the world at training infantry and artillery, but
it is today struggling to train product managers and data analysts.
Further, a growing body of curriculum needs to be overhauled. I
experienced this working with the Eisenhower School at the National
Defense University and the Defense Acquisition University, which is
responsible for defense industry studies and acquisition training
respectively. Given the radical disruption of the defense industry in
the last decade, it's immensely challenging for faculty and curriculum
to keep pace, even with leadership clamoring for it.
To embrace new paradigms, I offer five recommendations:
First, as my fellow panelist Ambassador David Miller has written,
the State Department should prioritize conducting an analysis of what
competencies to prioritize at the early, middle, and senior career
levels and a gap analysis to assess State's current approach.\10\
Following such an assessment should be the revision of courses
administered at the early, mid-, and senior career levels. Assessments
should also provide a justification for providing the authorities and
funding needed to make a meaningful human capital investment.
It's equally important not to rely solely on a single assessment at
a moment in time, but to build in a robust capacity to respond to
emergent needs and for curriculum rapidly. This is often best
accommodated by combining in-house instruction with a robust network of
outside commercial and university training and education providers.
Second, the State Department should embrace competencies that are
optimized for digital transformation and increasing uncertainty. When
the Defense Innovation Board's Workforce & Culture subcommittee was
conducting assessment of 21st skills for DoD to prioritize, they
recommended five focus areas for DoD: Design Thinking, Lean Startup,
Agile Software Development, Data Science, and Innovation Management.
Subsequent reports emphasized machine learning and artificial
intelligence. These are the 21st century skills modern organizations
need to embrace digital technologies and develop the adaptive
capacities of Learning Organizations.
Several DoD organizations have had notable successes importing
these types of methodologies from academia and industry, such as
NavalX, CyberWorks, AFWERX, National Security Innovation Network, and
Air Force Kessel Run. Often these efforts are undertaken in a familiar
pattern: a defense organization pilots a new-to-DoD curriculum from a
proven commercial vendor or university, eventually undertakes a train-
the-trainer approach to build instructional capacity in-house, scales
the offering of the curriculum to a wider network. The missing final
stage is embedding the new curriculum into existing educational
institutions inside the Department.
A notable success story is the NSF I-Corps curriculum developed by
the National Science Foundation, inspired by the Lean Startup
methodology pioneered by Professor Steve Blank at Stanford
University.\11\ The I-Corps curriculum is now taught widely to the
federal labs to commercialize federally funded scientific discoveries.
It has since been effectively adapted by the Intelligence Community to
teach Lean Startup principles for solving national security problems.
Based on the I-Corps curriculum taught to entrepreneurs and scientists,
a foundation called the Common Mission Project supports the Hacking 4
Defense (H4D) program now offered at more than 50 universities in four
countries. The National Security Innovation Network--a program of the
Defense Innovation Unit--supports H4D financially and programmatically
and worked closely with the I-Corps founders to make this national
program a true public-private partnership with DoD. There was a single
iteration of Hacking 4 Diplomacy course offered at Stanford University
in 2016, but without an empowered partner at the State Department,
Hacking 4 Diplomacy didn't catch on. The State Department needs a lot
more I-Corps, H4D, and similar non-traditional curriculum.
Third, the State Department should increase its collaboration with
training providers outside of government to increase the diversity and
agility of educational offerings. Much of the resources and experience
to draw upon exist outside of government today, and it's faster,
cheaper, and better not to immediately jump to building internally what
can be a blended approach.
When I was setting up a program in the Office of the Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy that we called Policy University--
admittedly named with a touch of irony--we did annual surveys of
leaders, managers, and employees to set learning objectives and then
outsourced modular curricula based on needs. Our data showed that this
drove costs down, increased flexibility, increased employees' use of
the professional development resources, and also employees reported
greater satisfaction with the learning offerings. While the evidence
was anecdotal, we believe this drove improved performance and
satisfaction.
A particularly effective example of this is the work of a company
called Dcode that specializes in helping commercial technology
companies sell products and services to government agencies. Reverse
engineering that business model, Dcode established they could also
effectively instruct DoD leaders to promote innovation in their
organizational cultures and to be more savvy consumers of digital
products and services. After several years of iteration with defense
and IC customers, AFWERX just awarded a 5-year contract to Dcode for
their educational services, which I regard as a victory for the Air
Force.
Fourth, the State Department should support homegrown innovation
efforts. When I served in government, I was aware of two impactful
grassroots initiatives at State to promote this kind of work: The
Collaboratory in the Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, and The
Strategy Lab in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. The
Collaboratory applied innovative approaches to support and enhance
State's educational, cultural and professional exchange programs. The
Strategy Lab focused on applying techniques from the private sector to
facilitate creative problem solving and original thinking about foreign
policy and security challenges. The founder of the Strategy Lab, Zvika
Krieger, and I worked together in DoD to pioneer this model during his
time working under former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. The Strategy
Lab did not survive, and the work of The Collaboratory has migrated to
other parts of State, possibly due to budgetary constraints or changing
bureau priorities. I believe these are both examples of the type of
efforts that should be receiving more support and attention, not less.
Fifth, the State Department should work to bring more perspectives
in from outside, even if temporarily. They do more to train the
workforce through on-the-job collaboration and exposure to new ideas
than any executive education course ever could. This should include a
variety of bi-directional exchanges with more State Department
employees spending time in rotational assignments outside of State such
as DoD's exceptional DoD ventures program where mid-career officers
spend 6 weeks at venture capital firms and startups, or its Education
with Industry programs such as SecDef Executive Fellows.
In the other direction, State needs to open up many ways for
Americans at the pinnacles of their careers fields to join our
diplomacy efforts. A lack of robust lateral pathways into the State
Department hinders its ability to bring in fresh perspectives to tackle
a set of problems that increasingly require diverse skills and
perspectives to solve, especially industry and academic personnel. This
is especially true at the mid-career level.
For example, it is time for the State Department to establish its
own State Digital Service. To thrive in an increasingly digital
strategic environment, the State Department should follow the path of
the U.S. Digital Service and GSA's Technology Transformation Services.
DoD faced a similar challenge, and in 2016, Secretary of Defense Ash
Carter stood up the Defense Digital Service (DDS). We now know that
having a dedicated team of public servants--software developers,
engineers, data scientists, designers, and product managers--who serve
as a self-described ``SWAT team of nerds'' significantly increases the
technical capacity of the Department to respond to urgent priorities
with sophisticated digital solutions. These teams are radically
different from and complementary to enterprise IT functions.
By strategically leveraging fellowships, the State Department could
bring in subject matter expertise in areas where the State Department
needs it the most, using expanded Schedule A and B direct hiring
authorities. These could take the form of existing fellowships such as
the Presidential Innovation Fellowships, AAAS fellowships,
Intergovernmental Personnel Act detailees, and the newly-created
Digital Corps. The State Department should create Executive-in-
Residence and Entrepreneurship-in-Residence programs in key topical
areas such as data science, cybersecurity, and sustainability. Offering
these programs would directly expand the scope of expertise within the
State Department.
part 3: adopting new delivery mechanisms for training
Today, the universe of digital learning opportunities and tools
have exploded. There are more ways than ever to deliver rich,
multimedia, interactive content to a globally distributed user base
such as the State workforce. They are all mobile, social, and on-
demand. More than that, in response to COVID-19 we have proven that
platforms like Google Classroom and Zoom can be used to expand in-
person, human-to-human educational experiences to virtual. These
technologies come in essentially four flavors:
Vast, publicly accessible platforms like Coursera, Udemy,
and edX that offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that
empower individuals to drive the learning experience.
Enterprise upskilling platforms like NovoEd, Canvas, and
Guild that empower employers to drive the learning experience.
Nimble, interactive self-paced educational technology apps
and micro-learning platforms that can also deliver measurable
gains in technical disciplines such as PluralSight and Code
Academy.
The emerging frontier of these technologies are Live Virtual
Constructive (LVC) environments in which individuals can use
avatars in multiplayer simulated gaming environments that are
very realistic. Companies like Praxis Labs are using
inexpensive Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) goggles
to allow adult learners to experience these simulations
incredibly vividly at home. With new computer-based
simulations, games could be conducted both synchronously and
asynchronously.\12\ Using both in-person experiences and
distance learning, the State Department could create a cadre of
Foreign Service Officers that practiced using the tools
available to them before needing them.
To take advantage of new training techniques, I have two
recommendations:
First, the State Department should increase the use of exercises,
simulations, and experiments. DoD makes extensive use of tactical,
operational, and strategic exercises for training and education;
concept development and analyses; requirements definition and
technology testing; and operational rehearsal to improve performance in
stressful conditions. Joint exercises with allies can themselves serve
as a potent diplomatic signal. I believe there is an analogous set of
techniques for diplomatic education, and presumably could serve similar
purposes. I acknowledge that the Foreign Service Institute has made
steady progress towards integrating scenario-based training into its
curricula. I suspect they need significantly more resources and
leadership imprimatur to expand this approach. As Deputy Secretary of
Defense, Bob Work created--and Congress authorized--the Warfighting Lab
Incentive Fund. Congress should establish a flexible fund to encourage
the State Dept to explore this.
As an interim measure, the State Department could work with DoD to
insert more State Department staff to participate in DoD exercises,
which would impose a lesser burden on the State Department and have the
added and much needed benefit of exposing both DoD and State personnel
to one another in a moment when civil-military relations could benefit
from such exposure and familiarization.
Second, the State Department must embrace an entirely new learning
paradigm that makes emerging technology a priority not an afterthought
in re-imagining training and education for the State Department
workforce. Some specific examples of what this could look like would be
to start with three pilot projects: first, negotiate a partnership with
a learning platform company to make a vast library of online learning
available to all State employees; second, work with a virtual reality
company to pilot online training for consular affairs and visa
processing in a virtual environment; and third, pilot an A-100 class at
several American universities as a prototype of a Diplomatic ROTC
effort while experimenting with new virtual training approaches.
Moreover, the State Department must contemplate the profound
implication of this shift that training does not occur in a set place
for a set time, but is possible everywhere and at all times, consistent
with the spirit of a Learning Organization. This means that in the near
future, the Foreign Service Institute must exist equally in the
physical world as it does in the virtual world. Its course offerings
include live only, virtual only, and are fully blended curriculum. Its
service population is not restricted to its resident students but open
to the entire State workforce--foreign service officers, civil
servants, locally engaged staff, contractors, and interns. The duration
of learning is not a week-long class or year-long language study, but
the lifespan of employment. I think this view is broadly consistent
with the spirit and letter of the amendment to HR-1157 introduced by
Rep Young Kim (CA-39).
conclusion
We need to preserve what the State Department has done right over
the last century to train generations of inspirational leaders to
represent our values and interests abroad. At the same time, we must
boldly experiment with new concepts and practices that will innovate
the diplomatic mission. Our diplomacy succeeds when we invest in our
workforce, especially in how we train and educate them to succeed in a
rapidly evolving and complex world.
The case for change in the workforce looks more urgent when you
contemplate the demographic forces at play. According to State
Department data: nearly half the Senior Executive Service and almost a
quarter of GS-15 employees are currently eligible to retire; within the
next decade ``nearly all'' of the current senior Foreign Service
members will be eligible to retire; attrition rates are up.\13\
Recruitment--but also training--will determine the character and
capability of the State Department for the next two generations.
For the last two decades, professional development and training at
the State Department has suffered from budgetary constraints, but also,
perhaps, from a constraint of imagination driven by a lack of resources
and often staffing. This scarcity mindset chases creativity away. As
Ambassador Nicholas Burns proposed, I recommend a 15 percent increase
in State Department personnel levels to create a training float,
similar to that maintained by the military.\14\ Investing in the
workforce is also a crucial tool of retention, especially because it
attracts and retains the best people.
These workforce concerns necessitate prioritization from State
leadership and congressional leadership. I believe that the points that
I have highlighted in this testimony are crucial for cultivating a 21st
Century diplomatic workforce. I had the great privilege to serve under
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. He famously observed, if budgetary
support for the State Department dwindles, then DoD needs to buy more
ammunition. Taken in reverse: investing in the modernization of our
diplomatic workforce is an investment in our national security, peace,
and prosperity.
Chairman Cardin and Ranking Member Hagerty and members of the
subcommittee, thank you for focusing on training and education, as well
as giving me the opportunity to provide my perspective today.
----------------
Notes
\1\ David C. Miller, Thomas Pickering, and Rand Beers. (2021).
Revitalizing State--Closing the Educational Gap.
\2\ Truman Center for National Policy (2021). Transforming the
State Department into a More Just, Equitable, and Innovative
Institution (https://assets-global.website-files.com/
60b7dbd50474252e6c8c4fc5/60f5acf9dcd30575c7386ab1_Truman-Center-Task-
Force-Transforming-State-Final.pdf).
\3\ https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/21-STATE-
44024.eml_-1.pdf
\4\ Peter M. Senge (2006). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and
Practice of the Learning Organization. Random House Books.
\5\ Stanley A. McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and
Chris Fussell (2015). Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a
Complex World. Portfolio.
\6\ Amy Edmondson (2018). The Fearless Organization. John Wiley &
Sons.
\7\ Carol Dweck (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Ballantine Books.
\8\ https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-office-life-at-the-
pentagon-is-disconcertingly-retrograde/
\9\ https://usaidlearninglab.org/
\10\ David C. Miller, Thomas Pickering, and Rand Beers. (2021).
Revitalizing State--Closing the Educational Gap (https://afsa.org/
revitalizing-state-closing-education-gap).
\11\ https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/resources.jsp
\12\ See U.S. Representative Young Kim's amendments to H.R. 1157
(https://youngkim.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-young-kim-pushes-
modernize-streamline-state-department).
\13\ https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2019/02/nearly-all-
state-dept-ses-senior-foreign-service-members-eligible-to-retire-in-
next-10-years/
\14\ Ambassadors Nicholas Burns, Marc Grossman, and Marcies Ries
offered this recommendation in their 2020 report, A U.S. Diplomatic
Service for the 21st Century (https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/
default/files/2020-11/DiplomaticService.pdf).
Senator Cardin [presiding]. Thank you very much for your
testimony.
We will now go to Ambassador Miller.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAVID MILLER, JR., PRESIDENT, U.S.
DIPLOMATIC STUDIES FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cardin. Is your mic on?
Mr. Miller. Now?
Senator Cardin. You are on.
Mr. Miller. Yes.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Hagerty, Senator
Kaine. I join Josh and, I think, many, many of us in saying
thank you so much for having this hearing on State Department
education and training.
It is a desperately important subject that almost always
ends up at the back of the line, and you guys taking the time
today when there is actually a lot going on in the Congress at
this very moment, I think, is just outstanding. Thank you very
much.
I have testified a number of times on this subject and I
will use my favorite sentence again. I have never seen an
institution work so hard to select people and do so little to
train them once they are on board. It is a stunning
observation. I benefited from the support of State Department
officers during two tours as an ambassador, 2 years at the
National Security Council.
I offer recommendations and some criticism from a deep
appreciation for the Foreign Service and the State Department.
They are fine people.
They, sadly though, I fear, represent a textbook example of
the great philosopher, Jim Mattis' observation that ``bad
process beats good people 9 times out of 10.'' General Mattis
has a lot of quotes, but I have always liked that one a lot.
At the heart of the issue is changing the current State
Department culture, period. That is a tough assignment. The
State Department does not incentivize or reward officers for
spending time in training. In the past several decades, it
never has, whether in a Republican or Democratic
administration.
Other institutions, both within the Government and the
private sector, recognize that without a clear and sustained
message from leadership you cannot change an institution's
culture.
Historical evidence shows that large institutions simply
develop bureaucratic inertia that is hard to overcome. Think
back to Goldwater-Nichols reform in the 1980s. The Defense
Department needed a congressional push then and the State
Department needs a congressional push now.
The committee asked for specific recommendations and we
have a number. The Congress should increase funding for the
Foreign Service. It is under-resourced and it does need float
for training, and it was encouraging to hear Deputy Secretary
McKeon mention the current request for 500.
I want to make a fundamental point here. Without
fundamental structural reform, I think that the money will not
be spent as wisely or usefully as it could.
Two very specific recommendations. I think the Foreign
Service Institute needs an outside Board of Visitors. That is a
model that has proved valuable for the National Defense
University, obviously, for almost all private institutions of
higher education.
That Board of Visitors, if you talk to the people at West
Point, hold that board in high regard for two reasons. One, it
helps West Point think about how to teach better, and secondly,
it helps West Point sell their innovation to a larger audience.
The Foreign Service Institute also needs a provost and we
need somebody that is an educational expert that is at the
Institute for longer than the normal turnover of Foreign
Service Institute leaders. The A-100 course needs to be
residential, as is everybody else's course, and it needs to be
significantly lengthened in time.
It would also help, frankly, if FSI leadership did not turn
over and over. We have been working with them for some years
and, essentially, we have had four or five different leaders.
The State Department has continued to rely on on-the-job
training or experiential learning, and while on-the-job
training is a nice idea, experience needs framing, which is
otherwise referred to as education. If you simply rely on on-
the-job training, you are simply not doing your job.
Finally, on the issue of diversity, mid-career training, we
believe, is absolutely critical for the retention of minority
officers. If the culture of the Department remains mentorship
and on-the-job training and informality, you almost inherently
are offering unequal opportunity to our employees.
If we want to address the exit of mid-level officers of
minorities, I think the mid-level career course becomes
absolutely critical.
With that, I will end my comments. I want to say, again,
thank you so much for doing this.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Miller follow:]
Prepared Statement of Ambassador David Miller
Good afternoon Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Hagerty, and
Committee members.
My colleagues and I at the Diplomatic Studies Foundation are very
encouraged that you are focusing on a subject that gets little
attention, but one which is of great importance to our country: the
education and training of State Department personnel.
Why is this issue particularly important?
Today, we see the emergence of a serious global competitor.
Countering the rise of China's competing political and economic model
will require diplomatic excellence. Frankly, our studies and research
over nearly 4 years have made clear that our diplomats today don't
receive anywhere near the kind and level of education and training
required to meet this challenge. State Department personnel will also
have to assume new responsibilities as our military forces,
particularly Special Forces, are redeployed to address new strategic
priorities. Our diplomats and their civilian colleagues will be the new
Tip of the Spear in many countries where the Department has benefited
from a close working relationship with our military. These men and
women deserve more training to help prepare for their new leadership
role.
So how bad is the problem? I have never seen an institution work so
hard to select people and do so little to train them once on board. I
benefited from the support of State Department officers in leading as
Ambassador two diplomatic overseas missions and during my 2 years at
the National Security Council. They are smart and dedicated people who
do critical work for our country. But, to quote General Mattis, bad
process beats good people 9 times out of 10. State Department officers
need and deserve an institution that prioritizes investing in their
professional education and training.
At the heart of the issue is changing the current State Department
culture that does not incentivize or reward officers for spending time
in training. In the past several decades it never has, whether in
Republican or Democratic administrations. Other institutions, from the
CIA to the FBI, to private sector companies like Goldman Sachs and GE,
all recognize that without a clear and sustained message from
leadership you cannot change an institution's culture. We saw this lack
of prioritization last week, when Secretary Blinken gave a speech
presenting five pillars on modernizing the Department yet made scant
mention of training. State Department leadership--even if so inclined--
will not be able to make this cultural shift alone. Congress must join
in demanding that the Department prioritize training and professional
development. Historical evidence shows that large institutions, both
public and private, develop bureaucratic inertia that is hard to
overcome. Think back to the challenge of the very successful Goldwater
Nichols reform of our military in the 1980's. The Defense Department
needed a congressional push then; the State Department needs one today.
So, let me offer some recommendations that come from years of
research on education and training in both the private sector and
sister U.S. Government departments and agencies, as well as working
with the Foreign Service Institute and the State Department.
Yes, Congress should increase the Foreign Service
Institute's funding. FSI is severely under-resourced. It was
encouraging to hear Deputy Secretary McKeon mention the current
request for 500 new positions for a training float when he
spoke before you last week. However, with any more resources
must come fundamental, structural reform. I recommend
establishing an empowered Board of Visitors, a Provost, and an
office responsible for collecting and doing research and
development on training innovation at FSI. Also, residential
training for the A-100 course, fellowship opportunities at
other departments and at private sector organizations in other
regions of the country, and more frequent and extended
leadership and management training for officers after they
reach the middle level and then the senior executive
thresholds. It also would help if there was not constant
turnover in the director position at FSI.
More rigorous training should be required as a necessary
step for promotion at all levels. The CIA simply mandates this,
while the FBI and DEA send clear signals to personnel that
without attending leadership and management training you were
unlikely to be promoted to senior positions. Private sector
institutions of excellence focus resources on critical
leadership as well. Yet the State Department by its conduct
discourages professional development, as promotion panels often
treat a period, including a year at a higher educational
institution, as a lost year. The State Department needs to
fundamentally reform its training and education incentive
structure. We hope this will be part of the promotion precepts
revision process Deputy Secretary McKeon mentioned the
Department is currently undertaking.
The State Department has long relied on ``on the job
training'' (OJT), or experiential learning. While important,
OJT is insufficient. Experience needs framing, otherwise known
as education, to give focus and context to the experience. The
Department needs to train its officers to discern how to best
use their experiences in practice. This is not intuitive.
Finally, the Department faces a diversity problem that
increased training could help remedy. Although the Department
recruits a diverse cadre of officers, a recent GAO report
showed an exodus of minority officers beginning at the mid-
ranks. If mid-level officers' professional development is left
in the hands of informal mentorship, which is intrinsically
unequal, then many minorities will continue to be underinvested
in, underemployed, and underpromoted. If all officers at the
mid-rank received more opportunities for training and
professional development, if everyone was lifted together,
advancement would no longer be random and unequal. This will by
no means solve the Department's diversity problem, but it is an
important step towards leveling the playing field for minority
officers.
Thank you again for this opportunity. Our Foundation has been
working to promote education and training for several years, and we
hope this is the start of a serious reform effort--an effort that
frankly this Committee must drive.
Senator Cardin. Thank you for your testimony. I want to
make a comment that is meant to be taken lightheartedly, so do
not take it personally.
It would have been much more effective if you would have
used the Naval Academy as the example rather than West Point,
with the chairman coming from representing the state of
Maryland and being on the Board of Visitors of the Naval
Academy.
But with that in mind----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Miller. Sir, I am engaged in a game right now at the
University of Maryland in College Park, which we call our
Diplomatic Power for Peace game. I am steeped in the ARLIS Lab
to the START program to the icons modeling. I wanted my son to
be in the Navy, but he is an airborne artillery officer at the
moment. He likes staying on the ground.
Senator Cardin. God bless your son. We appreciate all that
serve our nation and we are all together. Except when Army
plays Navy in football we are all together.
Mr. Miller. Yes, that seems to be a continuing gap.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cardin. So noted.
Senator Kaine, would you like to start?
Senator Kaine. I would be glad to, and thanks. This is a
very important hearing and there are some aspects of your
testimonies that I find very interesting.
Mr. Marcuse, Josh, I am going to start with you. Just to
repeat, in your interviews with State personnel from page 2,
``Fewer of them seem to believe State's best days are ahead of
them. Many describe an organization that, to them, feels rigid,
hierarchical, parochial, and risk averse, a culture that is
nostalgic and stagnating, leaders who are anxious, employees
who are disengaged.''
Then when you get to your observations or premises, the
first one is modernizing training alone is inadequate. You
cannot just fix training without going in and fixing culture,
and that seems to be a common observation between both of you.
It is interesting, when I have the meetings--I think you
might have been here when I was asking questions of Ambassador
Polaschik--if I meet with first- and second-term FSOs without
the ambassador present and I ask what will determine whether
you will stay or whether you go, and I do not know what I was
expecting to hear, but a theme that I hear is sort of a
rigidity theme, and it is less about training.
It is a little more, I have to go through the most intense
security vetting possible to get this job and then if I want to
order five pencils to be at my desk at the embassy wherever I
am situated I have to fill out things in triplicate because
they are worried that I may steal them or something. So you vet
me in an intense way, but then you still micromanage me in ways
that suggest that you do not trust the results of your own
vetting.
Those comments are just indicative of a broader rigidity.
Do we have a culture that rewards innovation and risk taking,
and you have an assigned role, but you also can and should
creatively freelance a little bit to grow the role and bring
good ideas to the table.
So I guess I would like to ask you, Mr. Marcuse, separate
and apart from the recruiting and training, what are things
that we can do that would encourage more of the risk taking,
creativity, skills that our professionals have in pretty high
degree?
Mr. Marcuse. Thank you so much, Senator, and thank you for
that observation because I think it demonstrates great insight
into the experience of our diplomats today, and I get the sense
that the people you were talking to you were very candid with
you in those conversations and that you understand what we are
up against with this.
I thought it was really, really important that Senator
Hagerty talked about training people to become supervisors and
the importance of that, and the common thread that I would love
to draw here is that all the studies from business schools show
that people do not leave companies. They leave bosses.
When there is someone at work who believes in you, who
trusts you, who supports you, who you believe is invested in
your growth, then you feel great loyalty not only to that
individual but to that entire institution, and when you do not
have that kind of leadership it builds into that frustration.
What it really comes down to is do employees feel like they
are trusted? Do they feel like their boss has their back? The
term for this is psychological safety, and psychological safety
is the precursor of innovation and creativity and critical
thinking and, crucially, of dissent, and that is really what we
need in order to have a culture of innovation and a culture of
learning at the State Department and, really, anywhere in our
government.
So I think that one of the things I would love to see the
Foreign Service Institute and the State Department do a lot
more of is take the art and science and tradecraft of people
leadership and elevate it to the highest purpose of our
training and education because if you take language and you
take the subject matter of area studies and you take all the
other things aside, what will determine whether our diplomacy
is effective or not is how we lead our people.
Leadership is not just hierarchical and top down. We are
leading our peers and managing up to our bosses, and we are
leading as individual contributors as well as managers at all
time, and there is no more fitting tribute to Secretary Powell
than to say that leadership should be our highest goal and our
highest purpose. I think that there are many observations you
have heard today about teaching leadership at the Department of
Defense. It is by no means perfect by any stretch of the
imagination.
It is something that the department takes very seriously
and I think that that is an important observation about
learning culture, sir.
Senator Kaine. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I have one more
question but I am glad to wait until you each ask questions, or
would you like me to ask it now?
Senator Cardin. Why don't we go to Senator Hagerty and then
come back?
Senator Kaine. Great.
Senator Cardin. Senator Hagerty.
Senator Hagerty. Thank you. I want to just note that your
question was, indeed, very insightful, Senator Kaine. I think
it shows a great deal of appreciation and understanding for the
challenge here. Thank you for calling that to our attention.
I am going to come back to Mr. Marcuse and continue this
discussion. I am very interested to hear about your experience
and your insights during your time serving the Defense
Innovation Board.
We recognize that there are many institutional challenges
that are related to the United States military. However, it
appears that the military approaches the issue of training and
education very seriously and dedicates significant resources
and attention to that issue, and it is not a coincidence that
some of our senior military leaders, such as General David
Petraeus, General H. R. McMaster, have earned their Ph.D.'s
while they were serving in the military.
Mr. Marcuse, in your view, what are the major factors that
led the U.S. military to prioritize training and professional
education and how are our soldiers incentivized and rewarded
for pursuing further training and professional education?
Then take us to what we can learn from that as you are
thinking about the opportunity for the State Department.
Mr. Marcuse. Thank you so much for that question and for
those observations, and one of the things that we have observed
about General McMaster is that in all the conversations that we
were in in DoD about innovation and dissent and creativity,
everyone would always point to the one general that wrote the
book ``Dereliction of Duty,'' and he said, well, we have
creativity in the Department of Defense. We have mavericks.
Look, we have the one general, General McMaster.
He would be the first to tell you if he were here and I
believe, Senator--excuse me, I believe General Petraeus would
as well, that they had to buck the trend to pursue their
Ph.D.'s. I have a colleague who now is a brilliant professor at
the Air Force Academy who was told that she should absolutely
not pursue a Ph.D. because she would never fly again.
We actually have research from the Office of Economic and
Manpower Analysis at West Point, which shows that your
promotion potential, I believe, is diminished by 40 percent if
you pursue a Ph.D.
The truth is, is that the people that have gone on to do
exactly the laudable behavior that you described had to buck
the process that one of my personal heroes, Secretary Mattis,
referred to here, which is that the process does not reward or
support this behavior.
What I do think we have seen is that it is an expectation
of everyone in the military to spend a substantial proportion
of their time in training, a much larger proportion of their
time than at the State Department, but the cultural barriers at
State and at DoD are nearly identical.
If you look at the training that we do offer in DoD, it is
not training in innovation. It is not training, for the most
part, in these digital areas that I highlighted. DoD is also
facing many of the same challenges that the State Department is
facing. I applaud that they gave themselves a bit of a head
start in the last 5 years.
What is really interesting about the kinds of training and
education that I think we are discussing in this dialogue right
now is that much of it that occurred in DoD was grassroots. I
will give you an example.
A bunch of Marines created their own Center for Adaptive
Warfighting. They just made it themselves. They got the
training online. They are autodidacts. Maybe they were able to
get a little bit of training dollars here and there.
We had to fight very hard to get even small amounts of
training, for money for these kinds of things. One of the
things you got to encourage, to unpack, to excavate and to push
the State Department and DoD are all leaders on--as you know,
they say that we are training people in data science, but we
really need to understand what that means exactly and precisely
because offering this kind of training does not necessarily
mean that they are learning the right curriculum or that it is
being done in the right way.
Senator Hagerty. My optimism may have been misplaced, but
the two gentlemen I mentioned are ones I know personally and I
had noticed that they had been able to achieve that, it turns
out to be, miraculous accomplishment. I would say it would be
even more so were it to have happened in the Department of
State.
If I were to find optimism, though, it is that the State
Department is smaller. Perhaps we could be more agile, and we
have a dedicated chairman and ranking member here that would
like to see change happen. We want to support that and move in
a positive direction. I appreciate your help there.
Mr. Chairman, I have another question for Ambassador
Miller, but I will come back to that after you have had an
opportunity to go. Thank you.
Senator Cardin. Everybody is being so polite up here, I am
telling you.
I am going to ask one question and then I will turn it back
to Senator Kaine, and that is you have indicated--I think
everyone recognizes that resources are needed, but resources
are not the sole problem that we have here.
There is a cultural problem within the State Department and
this committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has the
responsibility of oversight, of establishing the correct
policy. The appropriators will provide the dollars. A lot of
times in doing that they will put certain legislative language
in with the consent of the Foreign Relations Committee. They
try to direct the funds in a more constructive environment.
The better way would be for us to pass in reauthorization
language dealing with what structural changes we would like to
see at the State Department as it relates to this subject.
You have mentioned a couple specific issues on a Board of
Visitors or a Provost, but I am just interested as to whether
you could see some other statutory directions that you think
would be helpful in order for us to address the historic
challenges that we have had within the State Department on
promotions, on the availability of training, the scope of
training, et cetera, if there is ways in which we could be more
constructive in our authorization.
Ambassador Miller.
Mr. Miller. Yes. I think that the fundamental cultural
change is the link of education and training to promotion. That
is the key to success as you look at the CIA's rebuilding of
its training facility and, basically, the agency saying you
will not get promoted unless you take these courses.
The FBI and DEA offered incentives, i.e., if you want to
become an ASAC someplace or ASAT you have to take these
courses. If you look at that simple achievement, at State there
has to be a linkage between leadership and management and
training and promotion, which is, I think, the key thing.
I am also very, very concerned about the lack of training
for ambassadors. It is, in my mind, somewhat absurd that we
send out individuals with remarkable authority from the
President and we give them 3 weeks of training.
If you are in the private equity business that would be one
of these things you would say, ``Really?'' Either change the
letter or train the player, and I think that that is something
that you have to look at as a fundamental cultural change.
If, in particular, our Special Forces are rotating back
into main theater operations and our State Department is going
to become the tip of the spear around the world, in many cases
where we are in a soft power confrontation with the Chinese,
and yet, we have not faced into the fact that we seriously need
to consider the training that we give the people that lead our
missions.
Senator Cardin. Let me ask one additional question and that
deals with the training float. You have heard the comments that
we need have additional personnel so that we can fill with
competent help while training is going on.
The Administration's budget includes 500. If either one of
you have a view, first, as to the gap we have on a training
float and the need for us to have additional personnel in order
to make this easier for training, and secondly, is 500 a
reasonable number or do you have a view on that?
Who wants to volunteer to go first?
Mr. Miller. I think I want to volunteer one of Josh's
heroes, I am willing to bet, and that is General Odierno, in
the middle of an awful ops tempo mess, said, ``We are not going
to stop education and training.'' That sent a huge signal
through the military that education and training was absolutely
critical.
I would like to comment a bit on the float thing. Everybody
needs float. Everybody wants more float. Everybody wants more
employees.
In my opinion, I think that the State Department needs to
function, look at the available float today. Five hundred
entry-level people are not going to solve the issue of Deputy
Assistant Secretary competence. If we want to start to increase
training and you have 150 DASes or whatever, there is part of
my private sector soul that says surely some of those people
could be available for training now and meet the Senate and the
House halfway. Of course, we need more people for training. We
have more jobs to do overseas, but the float has to be found
also in existing senior officers right now who need more
management and leadership training.
Senator Cardin. Thank you.
Mr. Marcuse, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Marcuse. Absolutely. I completely support the expansion
of resources and staffing at the State Department. I do worry
that this training float is being used as an excuse. The truth
is, is that all of the new paradigms of training do not
necessarily fall into the same constraints and strictures that
the training float assumes.
The performance of FSI during COVID that we heard from the
Ambassador is really impressive. If it is true that they have
moved 94 percent of their training to virtual and that some of
the performance, at least in the core training and other areas,
have improved and they can do it from anywhere, then they
should continue adapting. They are on the right track. They are
iterating. They should keep iterating past the constraint of
the training float.
When I had the privilege of building a professional
development program inside OSD policy, there was not a training
float. Everything was done by going to the managers and saying,
``I am going to improve the performance of your people. I am
going to increase their employee engagement. If you believe
that what we are doing is a valuable use of their time, let me
have some of their time.''
They said yes. I think the training float is really
important for solving certain kinds of crunches, when you do
need it to be residential and you are dealing with a very
complex assignment system, and I appreciate that.
There is so much opportunity to do meaningful educational
experiences that could be done in spite of the float, and I
would encourage them to just keep up the momentum that we heard
earlier today and do even more of it and do more
experimentation.
Senator Cardin. Thank you. Thank you both.
Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Thank you.
When I have these conversations that I mentioned with my
first- and second-term FSOs, another issue that comes up that
is very connected to retention--it is not training, per se, but
it is very connected to retention--are issues about family.
I will never forget being in Egypt once and doing an FSO
meeting, and one of the second tours said, ``I have got to duck
out. I have a Friday night Skype date with my husband,'' who
was also a State Department person in Turkey. They would put on
nice clothes and with a glass of wine in front of them have a
Skype date.
The model of who was an ambassador, who was an FSO, from
days gone by might have been a white male and maybe the family
would accompany unless it was in a place of danger. Otherwise,
the family might not accompany, but now it is so often the case
that our FSOs have partners who are professionals, maybe
professionals within the State Department family or
professionals in other ways.
How good is the State Department at recognizing that the
paradigm of who an FSO is and their family obligations is a
little bit different than it would have been 30 years ago?
I am on the Armed Services Committee and it is pretty
common if we have discussions about personnel that I will hear
some version of--I have a boy who is in the Marine Corps--you
know, we recruit the Marine, but we retain the family. You get
somebody in and they are 18 or 22 that is one thing, but if you
are going to try to retain them, by then they might have a
family. You have to think about it holistically.
Do we have personnel models that are sensitive enough to
the realities of modern family life, including life partners
that have their own professions and want to be professionally
challenged?
Mr. Miller. Wading into this is like volunteering for the
Housing Board, which is something I was told never, ever, ever
to do, and so I did not.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Miller. I will wade into this anyway. I think the CIA
does a much better job of tandem couples, if you will, for the
obvious reason that the demands of an operator's job there have
to be part of a family structure. It is awfully hard to have a
COS and have a wife that does not know what her husband is
doing, or vice versa.
That said, generally speaking, I am not up to speed in the
last 4 or 5 years, but State, I do not think, listens quite
carefully enough to these challenges. One of the bits of
evidence of that, I think, is the mid-level exit, which is
about when families look at each other and say, if we are going
to live like this forever then this is not going to work.
We lose an awful lot of good people there, one, because the
problem is, in fact, difficult. I mean, let us not kick the can
down the road. I mean, this is a serious issue.
I do think the Department could do a better job of that and
I do not know of anything better to say than you have to learn
how to listen very, very carefully. One of the things an
ambassador can do at post is to listen, because you solve the
family issues one family at a time.
Senator Kaine. Mr. Marcuse, how about your conversations
with State Department personnel and insights into this
question?
Mr. Marcuse. Again, a question that demonstrates a great
empathy for the challenges that they face, one, I confess, is a
little bit outside the scope of my expertise, but as a parent
of two young children, I can certainly relate to it and its
motivation.
One of the things that we would need to recognize is that
there are moments in the life of everyone in their career,
particularly a career as demanding as being a diplomat, when
the best thing for their family is to leave.
What is heartbreaking is that they do not have a good way
to come back, and I think that we would do very well to have a
more permeable model of service that would facilitate
transitions in and out at these key milestone moments in
people's lives and careers.
There are incredible Foreign Service officers whose
greatest moments in their career were serving this country who
have chosen to leave because they are putting their family
first, but there will be a time in the near future that they
would love to return, and we should make it as easy for them as
possible.
At the moment, we do absolutely nothing for them. They have
to go through many difficult processes. They have to be read
back into their clearances. There is things we could do for
them financially and professionally that would recognize their
time.
Whether they took time away to work in industry or to
pursue further degrees or to take care of their families or
just to slow down from the pace of being abroad, we could do a
lot with human capital if we were more creative about thinking
about sabbaticals, intermissions, temporary detours, and
resuming, and that would also address the issue that you raised
of making sure that our Foreign Service officers can also take
care of their families.
Senator Kaine. That is a very insightful response. I
appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Cardin. Senator Hagerty.
Senator Hagerty. I would like to just come back to the
notion of float that you raised for a moment, Mr. Chairman, and
touch on something that, to use a business term that is similar
or related, is capacity utilization.
There is something that happens in the career progress of
Foreign Service officers that yields a great deal of
distraction and often misalignment, and that is why I am so
disappointed that the Global Talent Management team is not
represented here today.
Because I have had strong Foreign Service officers that
worked for me that have been, literally, out of sorts for
months trying to get their next onward placement, and what
comes home to me is an email that I received early this morning
from a Foreign Service officer, a very capable Foreign Service
officer that worked for me.
He has been 2 years trying to get to the right job, and he
wrote me to tell me finally, finally, he has found a position
that matches his skill set. Here is a very talented person that
spent 2 years in limbo. Again, they put him in some job but not
the best utilization of his skill set.
As a business person, that is a capacity utilization
problem. We are misallocating the supply that we do have.
Again, it is sort of related to the float issue, but it is also
an opportunity if we can come in and tighten up the time lines,
making clear the requirements and the metrics for onward
progress. There is a lot of opportunity in the HR side.
It looks like, Ambassador Miller, you have a comment there.
Mr. Miller. Yes. Fundamentally, if you looked at the
Department objectively, if you caught Josh and said, ``Why do
you not take a look at the Department for 30 days,'' there is a
huge amount that could be improved at State. It gets down to
how many signatories you need to move a memo forward. How quick
can we make decisions?
From the top to bottom, you revert to the culture
structure, and the culture is in many ways sort of a morass on
many issues and I do not know exactly how to attack it, but it
is pervasive, I fear.
Senator Hagerty. I simply note this, that there is a
tremendous amount of capacity that is being underutilized in
the Department today. It is disheartening to those that are
caught in this sort of process and it is something, I think,
that if we applied business practices and principles to we
could go a long way toward addressing it.
Any further comment on that point?
Mr. Miller. Part of your float issue, if you will--and,
again, it is a business practice--let us suppose you have four
DASes in the bureau and you say, I would like to take one of
them out for a week's worth of training, and they look at you
and say, ``But there is nobody that can take their place.''
Now, if that is the case, you have an investment problem
and that is somebody ought to be in training to take the place
of that DAS at some point. So you are just--it is an
opportunity both to train the DAS and look at the potential
replacement, rather than an impediment to, oh, we do not have
anybody for training. Just from a private equity background, it
is just another little bit of, you know----
Senator Hagerty. Yes, I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cardin. Let me thank both of our witnesses. To me,
this is exactly what the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
should be doing on oversight. We invest a great deal in our
diplomacy in the State Department and we know we have a
challenge in regards to the training issue and personnel
issues, and they are difficult to get a handle on, but it is
incredibly important that we have full capacity to carry out
our extremely important missions around the world.
I think this hearing has been extremely helpful. We had
some discussions yesterday about a reauthorization of the State
Department bill. You go back about 15 years ago, we used to
pass reauthorizations of the State Department bill and this
would be a prime subject matter of a reauthorization bill.
We have not done that in the last 15 years, mainly because
of the challenges in individual countries and it becomes a
target for amendments that can be difficult to handle, but on
issues like this, this would be a very healthy process to have
a reauthorization. We are looking for a way in which we can do
that. One of the reasons I was excited to take on this
subcommittee particularly was because of the support by both
Senator Menendez and Senator Risch of having this type of
oversight and making recommendations in regards to some of the
fundamental issues at the State Department.
Senator Hagerty and I identified training as an early issue
that we wanted to get our hands around and see whether we could
do something constructive. This hearing has been extremely
helpful to us in helping us understand what we need to do.
We will continue to reach out to you for help as we try to
struggle with what we can do both legislatively as well as
through oversight and appropriations to make sure that we do
everything we possibly can to have the strongest possible
presence on the global stage.
I, lastly, want to underscore what all of us have said. Our
Foreign Service officers and the personnel at State Department
are dedicated individuals serving our country with great
distinction.
We are very proud of the men and women who step forward to
serve in these critically important roles. They deserve a
system that recognizes their talent, that encourages their
development and promotion, and is compatible with family life,
and I think that is an area where we can improve and we intend
to be active in trying to make that happen.
With that, the subcommittee will stand adjourned with our
thanks to our witnesses.
[Whereupon, at 4:07 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]