[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

                              ----------                              
                                                                   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.]