Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("Just one obsessive observer, diplomatic watcher, opinionator and noodle newsmaker monitoring the goings on at Foggy Bottom and the worldwide available universe.") summarizes this professionally-relevant report.
Money quote(s):
"Among its recommendations are 1) fully funding of the staffing initiative under Diplomacy 3.0, 2) creation of a 15% training float, 3) long-term commitment to investing in the professional education and training needed "to build a 21st-century diplomatic service of the United States able to meet the complex challenges and competition we face in the coming decades"; 4) strengthening and expansion of the Department of State’s professional development process ; 5) establishment of a temporary corps of roving counselors to address mentoring problems caused by the mid-level gap; 6) a study that will examine best practices in the field to determine how on-the-job training can be most effectively conducted for FSOs; 7) completion of a year of advanced study related to FSO's career track as a requirement for promotion to the Senior Foreign Service; and 8) appropriately targeted consultations before a new Chief of Mission (COM) even begins pre-assignment consultations."
1. Failing to fully fund staffing means jobs go unfilled means FSOs juggle multiple jobs means decreasing quality of all jobs. And that even more jobs are simply left unfilled.
2. A "training float" means that officers are able to take the training needed to perform new duties or learn new languages before they go to new jobs. A lot of the hiring under the old DRI was intended to make this good, but then a war broke out and things like PRTs and two or three of the world's most highly-staffed embassies soaked up that safety margin like a sponge.
3. The Foreign Service Institute does a pretty good job training officers but not, so far as I've seen, such a good job at educating them. There's sort of an unspoken attitude of you-should-already-be-fully-educated-when-you-get-hired.
That's not the attitude, by the way, one encounters in DoD. Funny how it's the killing-people-and-breaking-things agencies that actually value education.
Odd how these legacies of the old WASP establishment era of American diplomacy seem to linger on, when the actual Foreign Service looks "a lot like America," as the saying goes.
State needs to consider establishment of an institute focused on education, and learn the difference between training and education. There is one, which is one reason you generally can't get college credit for courses taken at FSI. Not to disrespect FSI too much because it's actually pretty good at the training piece, but while it's got many of the trappings of an educational institute (coat-of-arms, deans, registrars, &tc.) that's all surface gloss.
4. SecState Powell did a phenomenal job at establishing and implementing the beginnings of professional development training because he understood, coming from DoD, why it's important. He got that there's a continuum of training necessary during the life-cycle of a career officer, whether they are military or civilians.
5. I'm not sure what "roving counselors" are intended to accomplish, where they're supposed to come from, and what mid-grade jobs will they leave unfilled while they're "roving." (If mid-grade FSOs weren't facing a 24% pay cut for serving overseas, perhaps it'd be easier to make up the shortfall in their numbers.)
6. Best practices are always good to share, Consular bureau makes this a near fetish (and I mean that in a good way).
7. Another requirement for "passing the senior threshold" may or may not be a good thing. Making it a requirement means the Department would need to make it a possibility rather than the fairly rare opportunity it is now. FSOs are eligible to bid on a number of out-of-Department training opportunities once they become tenured. Some of these are at non-governmental universities, others are as sort of exchange students at DoD schools like the various war colleges. Making this a requirement for promotion means either providing a lot more opportunities (governmental or otherwise), expecting FSOs to be independently wealthy enough to take year-long leave-without-pay (LWOP) sabbaticals to accomplish this, or deciding relatively early who's destined for "flag rank" and who's not.
A word about governmental/DoD schools: they generally seem happy to have a State Dept. person or two in any given class, as well as from other civilian agencies, in the various war college and other DoD schools. But if we're going to start really trying to load more FSOs into their training system, perhaps we should consider establishing our own advanced educational program, based at FSI for instance, where they can send their own exchange students. See #3 above.
8. I'm not quite sure what this intends. Is the idea that there should be more general pre-COM training for new ambassadors before they begin focussing on post-/country-specific consultations?
