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S. Hrg. 112–73 

STATE DEPARTMENT TRAINING: 

INVESTING IN THE WORKFORCE TO ADDRESS 

21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MARCH 8, 2011 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

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(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

JOYCE WARD, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee 

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL 

WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

LISA M. POWELL, Staff Director 

JESSICA K. NAGASAKO, Professional Staff Member 

AARON H. WOOLF, Chief Clerk 

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(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 1 

Senator Coburn ................................................................................................. 11 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2011 

Hon. Nancy J. Powell, Director General of the Foreign Service and Director 

of Human Resources, U.S. Department of State ............................................... 3 

Ruth A. Whiteside, Director, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of 

State ...................................................................................................................... 4 

Jess T. Ford, Director, International Affairs and Trade Team, U.S. Government Accountability Office .................................................................................. 6 

Hon. Ronald E. Neumann, President, American Academy of Diplomacy ........... 17 

Susan R. Johnson, President, American Foreign Service Association ................ 19 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Ford, Jess T.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 45 

Johnson, Susan R.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 19 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 63 

Neumann, Hon. Ronald E.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 17 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 55 

Powell, Hon. Nancy J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 29 

Whiteside, Ruth A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 38 

APPENDIX 

Background .............................................................................................................. 69 

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(1) 

STATE DEPARTMENT TRAINING: 

INVESTING IN THE WORKFORCE TO ADDRESS 

21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES 

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2011 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT

MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE,

AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in 

room SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. 

Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Akaka and Coburn. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. I call this hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the 

District of Columbia to order. I want to welcome our witnesses. 

Aloha and thank you for being here today. 

Today’s hearing, State Department Training: Investing in the 

Workforce to Address 21st Century Challenges, will examine the 

results of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review on 

that topic. We will also discuss key recommendations from a recent 

report by the American Academy of Diplomacy (AAD) and the 

Stimson Center on Diplomatic Professional Education and Training. 

Advancing America’s interest in safeguarding global security is 

becoming ever more complex. According to Defense Secretary 

Gates, a robust civilian capability, coupled with a strong defense 

capability, is essential to preserving U.S. national security interests around the world. 

Today, GAO is releasing a report finding that the State Department has developed an extensive training program for its employees. In recent years, the department has focused on increasing 

staffing levels and investing in training programs. State offers a 

wide variety of education and training opportunities, including traditional classroom, as well as computer-based training. 

However, GAO identified areas needing improvement. More specifically, GAO found that State does not yet comprehensively assess 

its training needs, track training costs and delivery, or evaluate 

training using outcome-based performance measures. I urge State 

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to work closely with GAO to implement its recommendations. In 

this tough budget climate, it is more important than ever for the 

department to conduct the planning and evaluation necessary to 

fully support its funding requests and target limited resources strategically. 

The House-passed budget would cut 16 percent from State and 

the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). 

I believe this cut is shortsighted and could lead to greater longterm costs. The events in the Middle East and North Africa over 

the past few months underscore the need for robust and agile State 

Department capabilities. Iraq and Afghanistan also will continue to 

present complex long-term diplomatic and development challenges. 

Around the world, the work of the State Department helps build 

more stable societies, which minimizes the potential for conflict, 

lowering the human and financial costs of military engagement. 

Meeting these critical challenges requires investment in the training and professional education needed for State Department employees to effectively advance U.S. foreign policy interests. It is essential to the department’s operations and our Nation’s security to 

provide State with the resources to properly staff and train its 

most valuable asset—its workforce. 

The American Academy of Diplomacy and others have recommended that State maintains a 15 percent personnel float to 

allow for training without hindering the department’s operations. 

The department has made great strides to try to attain the staffing 

necessary for long-term training, but the current funding environment has created a great deal of uncertainty. 

Congress must do its job to eliminate the funding uncertainty. 

We cannot expect the Federal agencies to efficiently or effectively 

implement long-term strategies with short-term funding extensions. 

I look forward to hearing from our first panel of witnesses and 

welcome them here today: Ambassador Nancy J. Powell, the Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources (HR) at the Department of State; Ruth Whiteside, Director 

of the Foreign Service Institute, also at the Department of State; 

and Jess Ford, the Director of International Affairs and Trade at 

the Government Accountability Office. Good to see you back again. 

As you know, it is the custom of this Subcommittee to swear in 

all witnesses and I would ask all of you to stand and raise your 

right hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, 

so help you, God? 

Ms. POWELL. I do. 

Ms. WHITESIDE. I do. 

Mr. FORD. I do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Let it be noted in the record that the 

witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

Before we start, I want you to know that your full written statements will be part of the record and I would also like to remind 

you to please limit your oral remarks to 5 minutes. 

Ambassador Powell, will you please proceed with your statement? 

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1The prepared statement of Ms. Powell appears in the appendix on page 29. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. NANCY J. POWELL,1 DIRECTOR GENERAL, FOREIGN SERVICE AND DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ms. POWELL. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to 

appear before you today to talk about the State Department’s efforts to ensure that our people are trained effectively to address the 

foreign policy challenges of the 21st Century. 

We worked closely with the GAO team on its study of our training and we welcome their recommendations. The State Department 

carries out U.S. foreign policy in increasingly complex and often 

perilous environments. The last decade has been marked by a 

growing number of global threats to our security, including violent 

extremism, trafficking in narcotics and persons, natural disasters 

and pandemics. In order to manage these threats, we must build 

productive partnerships with other countries to help strengthen 

their capabilities. We recognize that we must continue to reach out 

to influence public opinion and build our diplomatic presence where 

our interests are most at stake. 

In December, the State Department issued the first ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which provides a blueprint for elevating American civilian power to better 

advance our foreign policy interests. The QDDR also calls on the 

department to deploy additional personnel and resources to emerging powers and centers of global and regional influence, such as 

Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa and Turkey. 

We must ensure that our employees receive the support and 

training they need to succeed in these posts, as well as when they 

move on to their next assignment or return home. The Bureau of 

Human Resources is responsible for the State Department’s greatest assets, its personnel. The Civil Service, Foreign Service and locally-employed (LE) staff will advance the interests of the United 

States. 

Our mission spans the full course of employee services from before employees are hired until after they have retired. We work 

hand in hand with the Foreign Service Institute to ensure that employees of our three different workforces are well equipped to handle the demands of their jobs. 

In this report, GAO recognized the wide variety of training we 

have designed to provide our people with the knowledge and skills 

to address today’s diplomatic challenges. GAO also noted some 

areas where we could improve. I would like to briefly discuss what 

we have done to strengthen our training program. My colleague, 

Foreign Service Institute (FSI) Director Dr. Ruth Whiteside, will 

provide greater detail about FSI’s programs. 

Effective training is essential to the success of our people in 

meeting our foreign policy objectives. We agree with GAO that 

training programs, whether they be for our Foreign Service employees, Civil Service employees, or locally-employed staff, will not succeed unless we first fully assess our training needs. 

To better assess our Foreign Service needs, we completed a comprehensive job analysis for Foreign Service generalists in 2007 and 

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1The prepared statement of Ms. Whiteside appears in the appendix on page 38. 

one for a specialist in 2009. FSI used the results of these analyses 

to modify its course offerings. We have created a career development plan (CDP) for generalists and specialists that outlines the 

knowledge, skills and expertise they will need throughout their career. 

The situation with our Civil Service employees is a bit different. 

Entry-level employees have well-defined training needs and many 

enter through highly structured Federal internship programs that 

have their own training requirements. We are also developing a 

formal needs assessment for our Civil Service workforce. For our 

43,000 locally-employed staff in 270 different posts around the 

world, we require flexibility in assessing needs and planning in administrative training. We have increased training for these staff at 

our regional centers, which allows them to take many of the same 

professional courses given to United States staff. We supplement 

these opportunities with professional conferences and other training. 

Another challenge that we face as we bring in large numbers of 

new Foreign Service and Civil Service employees is the experience 

gap with our workforces. Approximately 33 percent of Foreign 

Service employees and 36 percent of Civil Service employees currently have less than 5 years of experience with the department 

and 61 percent with less than 10. We are continuing our formal 

and informal mentoring programs to help them. This is also an 

issue that the American Academy of Diplomacy addresses and Dr. 

Whiteside and I work closely with them. 

I want to take just a minute to touch on another training issue 

that I know is of interest to you, Senator, strengthening our foreign 

language capabilities, which are central to achieving our Nation’s 

foreign policy goals. We will transmit to you today the formal copy 

of our language strategy, which has been completed and cleared. 

But in the meantime, we have been working to align our tools in 

terms of recruitment incentives, career requirements and assignments, along with that strategy. 

With the news over the past few weeks highlighting how our 

world is changing and increasing the complexity of the State Department’s mission, it is highly appropriate that we are talking 

about training today. Our people are key to our success and we 

must ensure that they are fully equipped to handle not only today’s 

challenges, but are prepared to meet tomorrow’s as well. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak today and 

I will be happy to take your questions. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Ambassador, for your 

statement. Director Whiteside, please proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF RUTH A. WHITESIDE,1 DIRECTOR, FOREIGN 

SERVICE INSTITUTE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ms. WHITESIDE. Thank you very much, Senator. It is a great 

honor to be here with you today to talk about this important subject. 

The GAO report has given us some very helpful insights into 

ways we can enhance our training programs. We were very pleased 

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that the report found that the department was meeting 26 of the 

32 attributes of the strongest Federal training, strategic training 

and development efforts. We welcome the recommendations they 

have made in other areas where we can strengthen our actions and 

in fact, we have already closed out one of their recommendations 

on curriculum design guidance. 

The Foreign Service Institute is the department’s principal training arm. We provide career-long training programs for all the department’s employees, Foreign Service, Civil Service, and foreign 

nationals overseas. Our programs include over 600 classroom 

courses and over 200 in-house developed distance learning courses 

offered to our worldwide workforce. 

We train everyone in the department from our newest Foreign 

Service and Civil Service employees through our ambassadors as 

they prepare to depart for their assignments overseas. Our curriculum covers disciplines as diverse as management, consular, 

public diplomacy, politics and economic reporting, negotiations, 

area studies, among many others. 

In addition to these traditional areas, we are providing training 

and stability operations for those destined for our most challenging 

assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and other unstable countries. 

Foreign language instruction, as the director general said, is critical to our diplomats’ ability to communicate America’s message 

overseas and we provide language training in more than 70 languages. Leadership training is also an important focus and we are 

training everyone from first-time supervisors to newly promoted 

senior Foreign and Civil Service employees and we work closely 

with employees and family members as they transition overseas to 

help them anticipate and cope with issues they face, ranging from 

security and dangerous overseas environments to raising resilient 

Foreign Service children, to returning from high-stress assignments 

and moving back into mainstream assignments. 

The FSI curriculum is geared to support the entire embassy team 

and in our training audience we include students from 47 other 

Federal Government agencies who work in our embassies and 

many members of the military who also serve in our embassies 

abroad. 

We face many challenges for providing training for today’s complex foreign affairs environment. The secretary’s Diplomacy 3.0 hiring initiative has increased our training enrollments over 50 percent from pre-deployment days. I mentioned our stability operations curriculum, a new area that has led us into much more 

training with the military and understanding civilian-military relationships overseas. 

And we heeded the call from Congress and the GAO and others 

to strengthen interagency training, and we have created programs 

such as the National Security Executive Leadership Seminar for 

GS–15s and Foreign Service Officer (FSO)–1s from all across the 

government. 

A continuing challenge is the need to train a workforce that is 

deployed worldwide and we are proud to be leaders in the area of 

computer-based distance learning training, which makes it possible 

for our workforce to train over the internet 24/7 from wherever 

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1The prepared statement of Mr. Ford appears in the appendix on page 45. 

they are in the world. Today we have more than 200 courses ranging from foreign languages to trade craft, to supervisory skills, to 

the basics of reconstruction and stabilization, to augment the training that we do in the classroom and to allow folks, particularly our 

local employees overseas who would never have the opportunity 

perhaps for training, to access these invaluable resources. 

We work closely with the director general’s staff and others in 

the bureau to assure that our training is focused on the department’s needs and anticipates future requirements. We regularly review reports like the GAO reports from other parts of the department, inspector general’s reports, work of the director general’s office, like the job analysis she mentioned, and external reports, such 

as the Academy of American Diplomacy report we will be talking 

about later today. We are delighted to see Ambassador Neumann 

here and we work closely with him in that important study. 

In conclusion, sir, the men and women of the department, Civil 

Service, the Foreign Service, and our locally-employed staff have 

chosen the path of public service and they are doing tough jobs 

often in very tough locales and at great personal risk. They deserve 

the best preparation we can provide them to do their jobs at a very 

high level and to help them develop into future leaders. Especially 

in an era of tight budgets, as you mentioned, training is critical to 

ensure that our employees are performing their work with maximum efficiency and effectiveness. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for letting us be here and we 

look forward to your questions. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Director Whiteside, for 

your statement. 

Mr. Ford, will you please proceed with your statement? 

TESTIMONY OF JESS T. FORD,1 DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL 

AFFAIRS AND TRADE TEAM, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. FORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here 

today to discuss our report which is being released, as you mentioned in your opening statement. Because the State Department 

is the lead agency for U.S. foreign policy, its personnel requires certain knowledge, skills, and abilities to equip them to address the 

global security threats and challenges facing the United States, 

such as fighting terrorism, implementing AIDS, HIV–AIDS and 

other pandemic problems, environmental degradation and a number of other foreign policy issues. 

From Fiscal Year 2006 to 2010, the State Department’s funding 

for training has grown 62 percent, up to approximately $266 million for this year. It covers training in a number of key skill areas 

that have been mentioned by the other witnesses, primarily in the 

areas of foreign language proficiency, area studies, information 

technology (IT), consular duties and other important endeavors 

that are primarily under the aegis of the FSI, the Foreign Service 

Institute. 

Our prior work has identified staffing and foreign language 

shortfalls at the State Department. These challenges are directly 

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related to their needs to address shortfalls in the mid-level area, 

in particular, and also in the area of foreign language. We discussed these issues with you approximately a year ago. 

Today the department is currently involved in a major challenge 

in Iraq where they are trying to take over for the military responsibility there, which is one of the greatest hardship posts that State 

Department personnel are going to be involved in. The recent departmental initiatives, particularly Diplomacy 3.0, a multi-year effort launched in 2009, is meant to increase the Foreign Service by 

25 percent and the Civil Service by 13 percent by 2014. 

Mr. Chairman, our report today discusses a number of issues related to the State Department’s training. We acknowledge that the 

State Department has taken a number of steps to incorporate the 

elements of an effective training program. For example, the State 

Department has a workforce training plan. FSI has an annual 

schedule of courses for both classroom and distance learning for all 

State employees. 

State also has a range of evaluation mechanisms to assess employee satisfaction with training and seeks feedback through these 

annual training surveys. However, State has not developed—we believe State can improve in a number of areas, which we have covered extensively in our report. 

First, we believe that the State Department needs to complete a 

systematic, comprehensive training needs assessment to incorporate all bureaus and overseas posts. Since 2007, the State Department has acknowledged that bureaus in particular have not 

formally conducted annual training needs assessments. Without 

such systematic assessments, State cannot be assured that its 

training is connected to all of its true needs and priorities. 

State indicated that the Bureau of Human Resources intends to 

form an interagency group to address the comprehensive need and 

we heard earlier this morning that they have started to take some 

analyses which are designed to address our recommendation. 

State has developed guidance designed to improve information 

for employees about training opportunities, career ladders, and 

paths, and how training can help employees with their career 

goals. We found some issues regarding the usefulness of some of 

the guides that they have prepared. We found that specific training 

requirements designed by bureaus and posts for certain groups of 

employees are not always clearly identified in their training guidance. State has acknowledged that they need to address this issue 

and are going to be addressing our recommendations meant to improve the guides. 

State has also not developed a data collection and analysis plan 

for evaluating training, which could help ensure that appropriate 

procedures and criteria for evaluating training are systematically 

applied across the board. As a result, it is not clear whether and 

how State systematically makes decisions regarding how training 

programs will be evaluated using different methods or tools or how 

results will be used. Once again, we have recommended that the 

State Department address this issue and they have indicated they 

plan to do so. 

State has not sufficiently demonstrated consistent and appropriate support for training, because it does not track detailed data 

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and information on training costs and delivery that would allow for 

such analysis and a comparison of employees in different skill 

groups, particularly at the bureau and post level. 

For example, State could not provide data on the percentage of 

foreign affairs or political officers that have completed required, 

recommended, or suggested training for their areas of work. We believe this type of analysis will help them identify the needs and 

skills that they need in the future and we have urged them to include more analysis of this type of training endeavor. 

Finally, State has developed certain training-related goals and 

measures, but the measures do not fully address all of the goals 

and are intended to be more output versus outcome oriented. As a 

result, they could not provide clear means of determining whether 

State’s training efforts have achieved the overall goals that they 

have set for themselves. Again, we made a recommendation in our 

report for them to address that and they indicated they would do 

so. 

Mr. Chairman, I am going to stop and conclude my statement 

here and I would be happy to address any further questions. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Ford, for your statement. 

Mr. Ford, as you know, the State Department has invested more 

heavily in training in recent years. Its funding for training grew as 

you mentioned, by 62 percent between Fiscal Years 2006 and 2010, 

when State devoted about $255 million to employee training. At 

the same time, the number of Foreign Service, Civil Service and locally-employed staff increased by about 17 percent. 

Your report highlights the importance of evaluating training efforts. With State’s current planning and evaluation, can we be sure 

if State has sufficient funding for training and if it is achieving the 

desired results? 

Mr. FORD. Well, let me comment on a couple of things that I 

think are important here. First, the department does have some 

mechanisms to evaluate its training endeavor. I mentioned earlier 

the annual surveys that they conduct for employees overseas. They 

tend to focus on levels of satisfaction with the training that had 

been received and the department collects useful information on 

that. 

I think there are a couple of areas that we think the department 

needs to concentrate a little bit more on and that has to do with 

the results of their programs. They tend to focus primarily on employee satisfaction. We would like to see more analysis on the actual impact of the training so that if they are in a position where 

they have to make tradeoffs about the type of training that is going 

to be provided because of budgetary reasons, they will have a solid 

basis for determining where they need to make that investment. 

So our recommendation in the area of evaluation is designed for 

them to have better information to make better investment decisions so that if they have to make adjustments in training because 

of budgetary constraints, they will be in a better position to 

prioritize and spend the money in the areas that are most important for their mission. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Ambassador Powell, what is the current status of implementing the Secretary’s Diplomacy 3.0 initiaH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

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tive to increase Foreign Service employees by 25 percent and Civil 

Service employees by 13 percent by Fiscal Year 2014? 

Ms. POWELL. I am very happy to report, Senator, that using the 

funds that were provided in Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010, we have 

been able to increase the size of the Foreign Service by 16 percent 

and the Civil Service by 8 percent. These increases have provided 

us with a number of opportunities with some very, very highly talented people that we have been able to recruit. They are serving 

around the world at this point. They are in training. It has allowed 

us to increase the number of individuals who are in training and 

still staff our positions overseas. 

We have also created 600 new positions that are addressing critical needs in the areas that we have talked about earlier today, 

some of the national security, some of the hard languages, global 

climate change, women’s rights, food security, so a variety of things 

that were urgent needs and we have been able to fill many of the 

vacancies, particularly at the entry- and mid-level that have 

plagued our service over the past few years when hiring was not 

as robust. 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Powell, what effect does the current 

budget uncertainty have on State operations and training, and does 

State have contingency plans to meet its workforce and training 

needs in the event of funding shortfalls? 

Ms. POWELL. Senator, the answer is obviously difficult for all of 

us as we deal with the Fiscal Year 2011 funding. We continue to 

work on the program that we had set up with the budget using the 

continuing resolution. We are working very hard in HR to look at 

various scenarios involving different budget scenarios. The fiscal 

year (FY) 2012 budget has included additional positions in the 3.0 

effort so that we can continue that effort in Fiscal Year 2012. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Ford, State uses different models of training 

more extensively with different employee groups. For example, 

most FSI classroom training is provided to Foreign Service employees, and locally-employed staff overseas receive the largest amount 

of computer-based training. 

Did GAO assess whether the type of training provided to the different groups is appropriate? 

Mr. FORD. Our report does not specifically identify the appropriateness or the types of training that the department is employing. We acknowledge that the distance learning has been an expanding area and that the locally-engaged staff at the over 200 

missions overseas frequently use that as a device to increase their 

skill sets. 

I think the issue that we raise in our report has to do with the 

overall needs of the department and we think they need to have 

a solid foundation of defining what the needs are and then the 

tools that they would use to carry those programs out, be that 

classroom training, distance learning or external training, would be 

part of the plan that they would pull together to define which areas 

require the greatest investment. 

So our view is if they—we want them to do a comprehensive assessment to identify what those requirements are and then they 

would look at the tools that they have in place to address those. 

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That would include distance learning, classroom training or external training. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Ford, did GAO identify any specific additional training that should be required for certain personnel? 

Mr. FORD. As part of our report, we met with and discussed with 

a number of bureau officials at the department, functional bureaus 

and geographic bureaus, as well as some State Department employees overseas. We contacted 12 posts in the course of our work. Our 

conversations with those individuals indicated there are some 

areas that they believe the department needs to focus on in training. A lot of it has to do with occupational subject matter training, 

training in areas such as program management, contract management, some of the areas that we had in some of our prior work had 

identified areas where we think the department needs to improve 

in. 

So again, we would like to see the department’s assessment process clearly identify which of these programmatic occupational areas 

should be greater focused on in the training regime, because clearly 

the people in the field and at the bureau level have indicated these 

are areas that they think further training may be required. 

Senator AKAKA. Director Whiteside, as you know, three regional 

centers provide some training to State employees, particularly locally-employed staff. However, GAO found that each center’s model 

for developing and delivering training, as well as their coordination 

with FSI, varies. GAO also found that posts in African and Near 

Eastern Affairs regions currently are not formally served by the regional centers. 

Has State considered providing a more centralized and strategic 

process for offering training through the regional centers? 

Ms. WHITESIDE. Thank you very much for the question, sir. I 

think the answer to that is a definite yes. We have been very 

proactive in the last year and increasingly with the regional centers in terms of coordinating the training that they have done. 

We have recognized that because they are in the region, we can 

leverage their locations. We have been working with them to identify what we call adjunct faculty. These are persons who serve in 

the region, often locally-employed staff that can be trained to offer 

training. Then we are able to extend the number of FSI courses in 

the field that do not have to be taught by sending an instructor 

from FSI to the field, but that can be taught in the field by someone who has been trained by FSI using FSI training materials. 

We have a very active program now with the three, as you mentioned, the Western Hemisphere, the European Bureau, and the 

East Asia and Pacific Bureau, and they are in fact now reaching 

out more to Africa and the Middle East through arrangements that 

will reach those Foreign Service National employees (FSNs) as 

well, so regional training and using adjunct faculty to expand the 

reach of training in the most efficient way possible is a very high 

goal of ours. 

Senator AKAKA. Well, thank you for those responses. Good morning, Senator Coburn. 

Senator COBURN. Good morning. 

Senator AKAKA. Good to have you. I would like to ask Senator 

Coburn for his questions. 

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OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN 

Senator COBURN. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be 

here. I have a short statement. How many of you are familiar with 

what the Deficit Commission recommendation was in terms of the 

State Department; anybody familiar with the recommendation? 

The recommendation of the Deficit Commission was to essentially reduce State Department personnel by 10 percent based on 

studies that we reviewed. And based on the criticisms in the report 

that was released by the GAO today, every area of the Federal 

Government has some problems, including yours truly in the Senate. 

The thing that concerns me is we have Diplomacy 3.0 with this 

goal of ramping up at a time when we’re on an absolutely 

unsustainable course in terms of being able to pay the bills. It is 

one thing to ramp up. It is the other thing to ramp up without 

proper training and also the proper controls on the training. 

I wanted to come today to thank Senator Akaka for holding the 

hearing, one, but also to put into the record what is not going to 

happen in the future, and it is not going to get ramped up, because 

we do not have the dollars to do it. I also want to put into the 

record a criticism on locality pay. 

Right now the State Department has 25,000 applicants for 900 

positions. You essentially have 27 applicants for every one position 

that is open. The locality pay, which is another recommendation, 

in terms of comparison is something that we are not going to be 

able to afford in the future and it is going to go away and people 

ought to be expecting that. 

Our troops do not get locality pay. Our military officers do not 

get foreign pay. The other thing that the Deficit Commission asked 

to be done is for every consulate to really assess whether or not 

they are absolutely necessary everywhere we have a consulate. It 

is a new day and it is really important that our leaders, such as 

you all, understand that we are going to be under very constricted 

resources for the next 20 years in this country and the absolute imperative of having an effective diplomacy effort is vital to us. We 

understand that. 

But every area of our Federal Government is going to be required 

to contribute. It really works out that if we do not do that, we will 

be making these decisions in a very short time frame and not making them as effective as if we planned for them. I will not go into 

the reason why that is going to happen, but there are not many 

people that deny that is going to happen. We must do it in a 

thoughtful and in a very prudent manner as we go forward. 

I appreciate tremendously the work of the GAO to raise the prudent questions that need to be raised for all of us to be better in 

what we do. I recognize Director Powell and Director Whiteside 

having a report that is critical of what we do in terms of training. 

It is not meant to be critical. It is meant to make us better and 

I hope that the report that is put forward will reenergize us in 

terms of comprehensive training for the very valuable State Department employees that we have. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Coburn. 

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12 

Ambassador Powell and Director Whiteside, in recent years, 

more State Department employees have been serving in dangerous 

locations and carrying out their missions beyond the walls of secured embassy compounds. The National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 12 calls on the Federal Government to prepare all 

at-risk Federal employees for hostage or other isolation situations. 

My question to you is, what steps has the department taken to 

implement this directive? Director Whiteside? 

Ms. WHITESIDE. Sir, the directive is the specific responsibility of 

the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and their training program and 

we have as recently as within the last month been in touch with 

them about how to coordinate that in the government. I think currently that is being done primarily in our security training provided at post by our regional security officers (RSOs), who do an 

orientation for everyone who comes to their posts. 

But they have very recently been in touch with us to talk about 

what more we need to do to implement this in the department. 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Powell, how will the department 

use funds requested for fiscal year 2012 to implement this training 

and will the department require any additional resources? 

Ms. POWELL. Senator, we will use our planning documents, the 

Bureau and Mission Strategic Plans, as well as for particularly 

working with FSI. We are also going to be informed by the implementation of the QDDR. There are a number of new requests for 

training, new areas for training, particularly emphasizing the need 

to develop people who are comfortable in the interagency setting 

here in Washington, overseas and we will be looking at those. 

But we have a strategic plan that we are using. We have the new 

language plan that will also be available to us to guide the look at 

funding. Certainly looking ahead to implementing the GAO recommendations we will need to look at the cost for some of those 

in terms of the tracking. 

We have already set aside time and effort for the assessment 

needs study that is going to be done in our Civil Service mission 

critical occupations. Those are some of the high priorities for us for 

that target. But we will continue with the language training, our 

leadership training, and the other areas that Dr. Whiteside supervises at FSI. 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Powell, as you know well, foreign 

language skills are critical to carrying out the department’s mission. I am pleased that the department has completed a strategic 

plan for foreign languages, which GAO called for in its 2009 foreign 

language report. 

Please elaborate on what action State has taken or still plans to 

take to implement the recommendations for that report. 

Ms. POWELL. We’ve been working very hard on the strategy 

itself, but in the meantime, taking some very important decisions, 

I believe, to implement things that will come to total fruition after 

it becomes part of our standard strategy. 

The working groups that have been working on language have 

worked particularly hard on identifying languages for incentive 

pay. We have been studying what needs to be done in that area. 

We have also set up a new, and I think a much improved and straH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

13 

tegic approach to designating languages as critical, requiring training or proficiency. 

We also have a new strategy that’s been developed and is going 

to be used to look at recruitment language incentives, deciding 

which ones will gain people extra credit in the registry after they 

have passed the Foreign Service test. 

I am very pleased to tell you that we have developed a language 

training and assignment model. The pilot has been completed. I 

had my first briefing on it last week. It appears to have great 

promise not only for language training, but we think it may be able 

to address some of the needs that the GAO has identified and help 

us with other areas of State Department training in terms of modeling our needs on a longer term scale. 

We have been very pleased that Diplomacy 3.0 has provided us 

with additional opportunities to put students in hard languages. 

Our Arabic and Chinese students have expanded greatly, particularly since September 11, 2001, and we continue to recruit Dari, 

Farsi, Pashto speakers in our recruitment efforts, but also provide 

additional training for people that need those languages at FSI. 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Powell, I am a strong supporter of 

rotational programs to improve government integration and coordination. I am pleased that the department recognizes the importance of understanding interagency processes and has incorporated 

rotational arrangements into its training program. 

According to QDDR, employees will be encouraged to undertake 

short-term detail assignments in other agencies. Will you please 

elaborate on this program and what efforts the department is taking to encourage employees to participate in it? 

Ms. POWELL. The QDDR recommendations are under review 

right now and we have not really begun the implementation 

project. But the genesis of the idea was to support exactly what you 

were saying, of trying to provide people with familiarity with the 

operations of other government agencies with whom we work directly, particularly overseas now. Our country teams are very definitely interagency. 

I was in Mexico last week, or 2 weeks ago. The number of agencies sitting around the country team table is very impressive and 

the coordination that our people need to be able to bring to that 

effort can be developed through these details. 

We are looking particularly at details with USAID and expanding the details we have with the Department of Defense (DOD). We 

have greatly expanded the number of political advisors and the 

number of students who are attending DOD facilities and this has 

certainly encouraged a much better rapport as people—our provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan or Iraq, they already 

know each other. They already know the mechanisms for working 

across interagency lines. 

We anticipate that providing that we have the funds, we will be 

able to expand those opportunities to other agencies. Center for 

Disease Control (CDC) comes to mind, particularly for those programs that are working with HIV/AIDS around the world, but 

other details with the agencies here in Washington. 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Powell and Director Whiteside, due 

to the mid-level staffing gaps, more entry-level officers are being 

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14 

assigned to supervisory positions. The Academy recommends that 

all new officers in supervisory positions take a short course in supervising and mentoring employees, as well as supervising employees in other cultures. 

What steps has the department taken to make sure that officers 

have the skills needed to be effective managers? Director 

Whiteside. 

Ms. WHITESIDE. Sir, thank you very much. I think this is a very, 

very important question and one the director general particularly 

has encouraged us to focus on very specifically. In the last year, we 

have taken a number of steps in this regard. We have created a 

new fundamentals of supervision course that we are now offering 

25 times, I believe, a year in this first year, to try to be sure that 

first-time supervisors—we realize that many of our new officers, 

new Foreign Service personnel going overseas, will supervise local 

employees in their first assignments, so we want to give them this 

basic understanding of supervision. 

We have increased in our consular overseas training. For example, we have focused this entire year with the Bureau of Consular 

Affairs and with the director general staff on training consular officers who are first-time supervisors in consulates in the fundamentals of supervision and more nuts and bolts, if you may, of supervisory skills. 

And currently we are developing a series of distance learning 

courses, one on the Foreign Service, one on the Civil Service, and 

one on the locally-employed staffing system, to give all of our employees worldwide a better understanding of these systems, better 

understanding of the requirements of each system, how people are 

promoted, how they are assigned, how they are trained, and those 

courses will be fundamental for everyone in our system on this important subject. 

Ms. POWELL. Senator, if I could just add to that. Dr. Whiteside 

and I have particularly been working and have had the backing of 

the American Academy in their report on a project that we have 

found foundation money to do a pilot that will work with our firsttime supervisors of American employees. They will be provided 

with classroom instruction. 

And then we hope to have a recent retiree that will ride the circuit to their posts and see how they are implementing that training 

at post, talk to their supervisors to see what additional information, if we were able to do this again, that we could provide in the 

next class. We are quite excited about this as part of our attempt 

to improve supervision of both the American and the locally-engaged staff. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Ambassador Powell and Director 

Whiteside, the mid-level staffing gap also has created a shortage of 

mentors for younger State employees. The department has developed mentoring programs to address this experience gap. The 

Academy’s report also recommends that State establish a core of 

rotating counselors to provide mentoring. 

Would you please elaborate on State’s mentoring programs and 

discuss your reactions to the Academy’s recommendation as well? 

Ms. POWELL. Senator, we have a very robust mentoring program. 

For those employees overseas, for our American employees, we 

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15 

have charged the deputy chief of mission, the number two person 

at the embassy, with the formal responsibility. 

But certainly in my remarks to the staffs as I travel around in 

other fora, we encourage everyone to be a mentor. We recognize 

that particularly if you are overseas, you can very quickly become 

the old timer in being able to help a brand new employee, whether 

they are just new to the Foreign Service or just new to post. So we 

encourage everyone to be a mentor. 

Our senior employees have stepped up to fill this gap and I am 

very pleased with the mentoring programs. Several of our bureaus, 

including the Western Hemisphere Bureau, has created an entrylevel coordinator that is designed to work with all of the entry-level 

officers throughout that region of the world, a very interactive web 

page that has video clips. It has a great deal of information for people, an opportunity to answer questions. 

This has served as a force multiplier for our mentors at the 

smaller posts in particular. There are other efforts in East Asia, in 

the Middle East that are being done. Our ambassadors are particularly seized with this and see it not only in the interest of improving their mission, but ensuring that people have the opportunities 

that they have. 

We have started similar programs for our locally-engaged staff 

and for the Civil Service with full-time mentors and then something called situational mentoring in which we have several hundred people who have volunteered to be experts on a particular 

subject. There is a database and if you are interested in that particular subject, there is a group of people that you can request assistance from, go have a cup of coffee, or if it is a more formal question, they will assist you in getting to the right place in the department to get the assistance that you need. 

But this is a constant effort. We are very pleased with the volunteers that have done this and we will continue to expand it. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. On the same question, Mr. Ford, 

what are the key elements needed to ensure an effective mentoring 

program? 

Mr. FORD. Well, I think there’s a couple—several things here. 

First of all, it’s encouraging to hear that the department is focusing 

on mentoring. This is an issue not unique to State Department. 

Many Federal agencies in town, including our own, we have a lot 

of younger employees that we are trying to teach how to do our 

work, but also to mentor them in how they advance their careers. 

I think that the critical thing here is identifying first of all what 

the needs are of the employees. I think it is important, particularly 

for junior staff, to have a good understanding of what their basic 

needs are, what kind of skills they need to develop particularly 

early on in their career and that the mentoring program be directly 

tied to that so that the mentoring has not just generic value by 

having a senior person, for example, like myself, to tell my staff 

what I think is important. 

I think it needs to be tied to what their skills needs are and that 

needs to be fully developed and defined in order to have an effective program. So I would say that is the key step of a mentoring 

program that is not unique to the State Department. I think it is 

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16 

true in general for Federal agencies that are now staffed with a lot 

of junior staff. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you for that response. I have a final question for the State Department witnesses and then I will give Mr. 

Ford an opportunity for final comments. 

Ambassador Powell and Director Whiteside, what do you expect 

to be the key challenges to implementing GAO’s recommendations? 

Director Whiteside. 

Ms. WHITESIDE. Sir, I think there are a couple of things. One is 

we are a worldwide workforce in 270 missions overseas and in 

many domestic facilities around the United States. Our workforce, 

particularly locally-engaged staff, I think vary so much from post 

to post. There are cultural differences, obviously, in every post in 

the world. There are levels of sophistication. Our local employee 

staff range from highly sophisticated professionals to those who 

work in support positions around the embassy. 

So I think the key challenge will be how to assess the needs of 

this worldwide workforce when they are so geographically dispersed and very different within the mission itself. But I think we 

are very focused on being able to do that. We will work closely with 

the regional bureaus in this upcoming cycle of strategic planning 

where each mission overseas prepares its strategic plan, to come in 

to do our best to encourage them to help us identify the needs of 

those workforces so that we can then address them more strategically. 

So I think the key challenges are simply the nature of our business that gives us such both dispersed and very diverse workforce. 

But I think we are very focused on trying to address the GAO’s recommendations in that area. 

Ms. POWELL. If I could echo that by pointing out that there is 

an additional complicating factor for us in that the world does not 

stay still. We are constantly having to anticipate and to react to 

the new challenges that come to us in the midst of designing a program that has to have enough flexibility to be able to do that. 

I think, obviously, the resource constraints that were previewed 

here this morning are ones that we will have to take seriously as 

we design our programs and attempt to make sure that our people 

have the skills and the training that they need. But it is a very 

diverse workplace. The flexibility is very, very important, that we 

be able to anticipate and respond as the world changes. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much for your response. Mr. 

Ford, would you like to make any final statements? 

Mr. FORD. Yes, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I want to say that 

during the course of this assessment, the State Department was 

very cooperative with us. We work well with their staff. As I tried 

to say in my opening statement, we think there are a lot of positive 

things that the department is doing in the training area. 

I think the key in the future is they have some challenges now 

because of the exigencies of operating in conflict zones. We are 

going to be civilianizing our efforts in Iraq. That is going to require 

a lot of manpower based on what the State Department is proposing and they are going to have challenges in training people for 

that mission. 

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17 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Neumann appears in the appendix on page 55. 

I think the key here again, and if in fact there is a constrained 

budget environment, it is critical that the department is able to 

prioritize the most valuable types of training that they need to provide to their employees. We think the process they go through to 

help identify those priorities is critical and I think that if they take 

the right steps forward to identify what their real needs are in 

these kind of situations, that they will be able to identify what they 

really need so that they have the right skill sets being developed 

for the staff that they have to carry out their mission. 

So I think I feel positive about the State Department’s response 

to our report and we are hopeful that they will implement our recommendations and they will be able to provide Congress with some 

tangible information on what they are doing down the road as they 

go forward. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Ford. I want to thank 

this panel for your valuable testimony this morning and tell you 

that it will certainly help us in our work here in the Senate. 

I would like at this time to ask the second panel of witnesses to 

come forward. [Pause.] 

I want to welcome our second panel of witnesses, the Ambassador Ronald Neumann, President of the American Academy of Diplomacy; and Susan Johnson, President of the American Foreign 

Service Association (AFSA). 

As you know, it is the custom of the Subcommittee to swear in 

all witnesses, so will you please stand and raise your right hands? 

Do you swear that the testimony you are both about to give this 

Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 

truth so help you, God? 

Mr. NEUMANN. I do. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Let it be noted in the record that the 

witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

Before we start, I want to say that your written statement will 

be part of the record and I would like to remind you to limit your 

oral remarks to 5 minutes. 

So Ambassador Neumann, will you please proceed with your 

statement? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. RONALD E. NEUMANN,1 PRESIDENT, 

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DIPLOMACY 

Mr. NEUMANN. Senator Akaka, as demonstrations sweep across 

the Arab World, we have seen exemplary performance by Foreign 

Service Officers (FSOs) taking risks to protect American citizens 

and report on developments. Yet despite the work of a number of 

superbly qualified Arab-speaking officers, our government lacks 

sufficient trained Arabic-speaking officers to fully understand and 

assess what is happening, to go beyond the glib English-speaking 

reporters in Tahrir Square to take the full measure of what 

Islamists, young people, demonstrators, and the jobless are saying 

off camera. 

We lack these capacities because for years the department lacked 

the resources to train enough officers. The Director General and 

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18 

Dr. Whiteside are making progress in addressing the problem, but 

it will be years before they can compensate for the mistakes of the 

past. This is a microcosm of the training problem that you on this 

Subcommittee and your colleagues are going to make worse or better in the budgets of this and the next few years. 

The American Academy of Diplomacy, an expert non-partisan organization that you know well, has just released this study of 

training and education necessary for our diplomats. This study 

found serious problems and makes specific recommendations, it 

builds on our earlier study of ‘‘A Foreign Affair’s Budget for the Future’’ (FAB) and like that study, was funded by the Una Chapman 

Cox Foundation with, in this case, help from the American Foreign 

Service Association, Delavan Foundation and our own resources. 

Ambassador Robert Beecroft headed the work. 

Let me highlight our most important issues and recommendations. First is the need for personnel. With congressional support, 

the State Department has made serious progress. However, the 

progress is not complete. Several hundred positions are needed still 

for training alone. The Department lacks an adequate number of 

positions for what the military calls a training float. Until an adequate reserve is created, all the recommendations of yours, ours, 

the Secretary of State, are frankly so much useless noise they cannot be implemented without sufficient personnel and funding. 

Second, the personnel system must take more responsibility for 

ensuring that officers actually take the training they need. You 

might think, as I did previously, that mandatory and required are 

synonyms, but not in the State Department when it comes to training. Mandatory means no kidding, you have to do it. Required 

means you should do it, but because we need you elsewhere, you 

can get a waiver and skip it, and too much of the training officers 

need is required, which means it really isn’t. 

While resources are important, another issue is that assignment 

decisions are limited to immediate service needs and officers’ personal preferences. Integrating assignments into how we produce experienced officers would significantly strengthen the service. The 

system already in place to do this, the Career Development Program (CDP), needs to be strengthened. We make recommendations 

to that end. 

We see a need for integration of resources and authorities to arrive at a situation where in most cases officers must take the training they require before getting to their jobs. That is not now happening. 

Third, diplomatic officers, like military counterparts, need to go 

beyond training on specifics to broader military education. As our 

military colleagues say, train for certainty, but educate for uncertainty. One of our most far reaching recommendations is to institute a full year of professional education for all middle grade officers. We know it cannot be done immediately. We urge that a 

gradually increasing cascade of officers be devoted to this end. 

In this connection, I want to say that while we are generally 

strongly supportive of the administration’s management of the department, to hire only at attrition is a mistake. Even if it is five 

officers, we think the direction of increase needs to be sustained. 

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1The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson appears in the appendix on page 63. 

There are many additional recommendations that I will not detail here. They cover ways to overcome the temporary gap in midlevel officers and improve supervision. They touch on better ways 

to train senior officers. I hope the Subcommittee will give all these 

recommendations due consideration. 

Chairman Akaka, in closing, we recognize the difficult budgetary 

time. Nevertheless, let me leave you with one rather shocking figure and a final thought. The statistics which Director Powell mentioned is not new. Today two-thirds of U.S. Foreign Service Officers 

have less than 10 years of service. Let me repeat that. Two-thirds 

of our diplomats have less than 10 years of experience. 

We cannot afford to leave their training to mistakes made on the 

way to experience. Not building our professional staff is akin to 

leaving maintenance of facilities undone. In the end it costs more 

in time and money to repair the damage. I hope as cuts are examined the Congress will recognize that diplomacy is an essential element of national security and by far the cheapest part in lives and 

dollars. But to the extent that cuts must be made, let them be 

made in programs rather than in personnel. 

I assure you that over time the results will be to our country’s 

benefit. Thank you and I am ready for your questions. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Ambassador, for your 

statement. Ms. Johnson, will you please proceed with your statement? 

TESTIMONY OF SUSAN R. JOHNSON,1 PRESIDENT, AMERICAN 

FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION 

Ms. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, the American Foreign Service Association, welcomes this opportunity to speak before this Subcommittee on the subject of State Department training, professional education and formation, and I look forward very much to 

meeting with Senators Johnson and Coburn and their staffs on another occasion. 

The question of professional education and training for 21st Century diplomacy and development goes to the heart of our national 

security readiness and competitiveness. Diplomacy and development are key instruments of our national power and should be our 

primary tools for advancing U.S. interest abroad. 

There are no alternatives to diplomacy, as invariably military 

interventions are costly and complicated and must remain the option of last resort. AFSA is proud to represent employees not only 

of the State Department, but also of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Foreign Commercial Service, the Foreign Agricultural Service and the International Broadcasting Bureau. 

AFSA’s over 11,000 active duty members represent today a much 

broader and more diverse range of concerns and aspirations then 

when I entered the Service in 1980. As AFSA president, one of my 

goals is to help ensure that the institutional environment in which 

our next generation of diplomats must work stays attuned and responsive to both the enduring and the new demands of their chosen 

profession. 

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We therefore welcome the focus of this timely hearing on this important issue for our Nation’s diplomatic service and look forward 

to a similar focus on our development service, USAID. As I noted 

in my written testimony, AFSA warmly welcomes the Academy of 

American Diplomacy (AAD) study on Forging a 21st Century Diplomatic Service for the United States through Professional Education 

and Training. 

As Ambassador Neumann noted in his excellent testimony, the 

first three AAD recommendations focus on the urgent need to redress our chronic under investment in diplomacy and development 

by fully funding Diplomacy 3.0 hiring and providing a training reserve or float and by making a long-term commitment to investing 

in professional formation and training. We agree with him that if 

there is no training reserve, the remaining recommendations become almost meaningless. 

In connection with AFSA’s participation in the AAD study, we invited a number of former U.S. diplomats now in academia to help 

define a core body of knowledge that should be common to all U.S. 

diplomats. They noted the dramatic shifts in the geopolitical environment that foreshadow the rise of competing power centers and 

value systems and emphasize that marginal change in an effort to 

strengthen our diplomatic service will not be sufficient to meet 

coming challenges. 

The huge advantage the United States enjoys in the conduct of 

its international affairs by virtue of our unparalleled hard and soft 

power does not detract from the need to exercise astute professional diplomacy to anticipate developments, to provide sound advice to promote our interests and avoid costly mistakes. 

We need a first-class diplomatic service to maintain U.S. global 

leadership and to better advance and defend U.S. interests. AFSA 

also supports the GAO recommendations and believes that in order 

to undertake effective training needs assessment, the starting point 

must be a clear concept in definition of what we are training for, 

translated into operational terms and related to the central themes 

of the department’s recently completed Quadrennial Diplomatic 

and Development Review. 

Second, we would like to see greater recognition of the importance of a diplomatic service that can operate from a well-defined 

foundation of professional standards and ethics, education, skills 

and know-how that is shared, in common. Our military colleagues 

have demonstrated the role and importance of professional education and training in creating services that are more than the sum 

of their parts. 

Third, AFSA believes that in order to prepare the next generation of American diplomats now in mid-career for a leadership role, 

there must be a system that ensures their participation in defining 

the needs and priorities of American diplomacy today. AFSA welcomes the growing recognition of the urgent need for increased investment in American diplomacy and in the Foreign Service as an 

institution. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. AFSA values your long-standing support of initiatives to enhance the diplomatic readiness of our civilian Foreign Service agencies and we 

particularly appreciate the leadership that you have shown in conH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

21 

vening this hearing and we look forward to continuing to serve as 

a resource to you and your colleagues. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Ms. Johnson. 

Ambassador Neumann, in your testimony, you stated the department still lacks an adequate number of positions for a training 

float. Although State has expanded positions for language training, 

it has not been able to do the same for training in leadership and 

other critical skills. 

Will you please discuss how a training float could help support 

our overseas diplomatic operations? 

Mr. NEUMANN. Senator Akaka, thank you for doing this hearing. 

Essentially, all aspects of training are geared to improving performance overseas, so I think it is therefore axiomatic that if you 

don’t train, your performance will be less, unless you are extraordinarily lucky. 

If the department continues to lack a float, it will be where it has 

been for many of these past years, pulling people to get them into 

jobs to diminish gaps in assignments and they will therefore, continue to be unavailable for the training that everybody agrees they 

ought to have. So I think the pieces couple together. 

I do not think it will be possible, even with the best 

prioritization, to comment in a sense on Mr. Ford’s earlier optimism. I am more skeptical. If the personnel do not exist to allow 

them to be withdrawn from the line, as it were, from the active 

work, then you can do a little better by prioritizing what you do 

not have. But after that, you will not get much better. 

Senator AKAKA. As you both know, FSOs are serving in increasingly more remote and dangerous locations. The State Department 

provides security training to make sure FSOs have the proper 

skills to avoid, manage and respond to dangerous situations, such 

as hostage situations or the recent uprisings in North Africa and 

the Middle East. 

To both of you, what additional steps should the department take 

to make sure FSOs are sufficiently trained for dangerous situations? 

Mr. NEUMANN. Do you want to start? You have a constituent. 

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In fact, that question 

is very important to AFSA because it is our members that we are 

talking about and their security and their ability to provide also for 

the security of their colleagues. And in this regard, I think we 

would certainly subscribe to the axiom that an ounce of prevention 

is worth a great deal. 

So we believe that this issue should be looked at creatively to see 

whether what we are currently doing is adequate. I did hear a reference in, and I think it was Ambassador Powell’s testimony, to the 

role of the RSOs in providing security training. We have often 

heard from our members that the RSOs are already overburdened 

with other responsibilities and often have not had any experience 

with training, and therefore, to rely on that as the principal mode 

of providing training at post is not sufficient. 

Now, I realize that additional training is taking place in the department, or at FSI, prior to assignment. I do not know if that is 

required or mandatory and if there are any waivers, but I am hopH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

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ing that it is mandatory. We have heard and talked with Diplomatic Security about this and there are a number of efforts underway, or there are a number of courses actually underway—not underway now, but available, that train people in how to be aware 

of dangerous situations as they develop and how to escape from 

them. 

But I think this brings us back again to the topic of importance 

to you, which is language training, and something that I have 

found in my experience, that if we are sending officers into potentially harm’s way, to the extent that they are language capable, 

they will be better able to anticipate, prevent, manage, deal with 

those situations. So language training is not just training needed 

to better communicate. It is training to be more secure. 

Mr. NEUMANN. It is a fascinating question you ask, Senator 

Akaka. It is one that I have perhaps more experience with than 

most having served in four wars, one as a soldier, three as a diplomat. I’ve had my embassy stormed in Bahrain and carried a 

weapon under threat situations in countries in the old days when 

we had no security, so I sort of lived this. 

I subscribe to what Ms. Johnson said. I do believe that we have 

gotten a lot better at security training. One will never be perfect 

because there will always be new threats and new challenges, but 

the department is doing a great deal more. 

I think one issue that needs to be addressed is not in the area 

of training, but in the area of decision making. How much risk do 

we want our officers to take? The department has historically been 

very risk-adverse, but we are living in situations where that is not 

a sufficiency. In my experience, what often happens is that officers 

actually take more risks than the department would prefer in order 

to accomplish their jobs. 

I think there is a greater degree of courage in Foreign Service 

Officers than is often recognized in their public image and some of 

those who have worked for me have died in the line of duty. But 

I think the department has a responsibility to reconsider the issues 

of risks so that officers who have to take risks to accomplish their 

job do not have to risk their careers by stretching the regulations 

at the same time that they risk their lives for the performance of 

national goals. 

That is an issue that is raised in the QDDR. It calls for a reexamination of this issue of risk. I hope the department follows 

through. It is the kind of thing where if the Congress does what 

the department has asked and mandates the QDDR being instituted in law so that it has to be redone, is the kind of thing that 

will get follow-up in the future. 

Thank you for asking the question, sir. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. Let me call a very brief 

recess. [Recess.] 

The Subcommittee will be in order. 

I would like to continue with a question for Ms. Johnson. As you 

know, I asked Ambassador Powell about State’s efforts to make 

sure that officers have the needed supervisory skills. I would like 

you to comment as well on State’s supervisory skill training. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. AFSA is very pleased 

that the department is undertaking a number of new measures 

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that they are to address the issue of supervisory skills. We have 

seen in the surveys that we have conducted and in feedback from 

our members that this has been an area of considerable concern 

and occasionally complaint. And we have also seen in the grievance 

area that we deal with and other areas that AFSA operates that 

people are dissatisfied and sometimes not qualified or haven’t been 

provided the training necessary to be effective supervisors. 

So we are very pleased to see that the department is actively 

seeking to do a better job and to institute new courses, which I 

hope will be mandatory, for employees who are going out to firsttime supervisory jobs, and to pay more attention to this whole 

issue as people move through the mid-career. 

Senator AKAKA. As you both know, much of the training at the 

posts is on-the-job training, which is an important aspect of training. The Academy recommends that State conduct a study to examine best practices for on-the-job training. My question to both of 

you is, what recommendations would you give the department regarding carrying out this study? 

Mr. NEUMANN. I guess I should start since it was our recommendation. 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Neumann. 

Mr. NEUMANN. Thank you, Senator Akaka. I think, of course, I 

would look to professional trainers and people who have looked at 

this kind of issue before to do this sort of study. And anecdotally, 

we hear things about some people relate much better to Generation 

X, Generation Y people than others, that there are techniques that 

convey information better, and others that get people’s backs up. 

The point of a survey would be to pick up that kind of information, both from those doing on-the-job training and those who receive counseling on the job, what works, what doesn’t, to try to 

compile a sense of best practices. Then to put that into some readily digestible form. As Director Powell noted, all Deputy Chief Missions (DCMs) have this mentoring responsibility. It would be very 

helpful for people who have newly become DCMs, or maybe not so 

new, who have this responsibility, to have something to go on beyond completely gut instinct as to what works best in mentoring. 

They might be able to go through a short, possibly distance learning course in how do you identify different generational types. 

What kinds of things work best to convey advice so that it is meaningful and useful? That is the kind of thing we are looking at. 

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. I would just like to add to the comments of Ambassador Neumann, with which I agree. But from my 

own experience and what people have said to me, it might be helpful if we could identify what specific skills we want to develop and 

perfect through this on-the-job training and make that clear upfront, both to the DCM and to the mentors, as well as to the 

mentees, so you would get a better sense of whether the experiences that the mentor is trying to make sure an employee gets to 

constitute the sort of on-the-job training are in fact the right ones 

and which gaps there are. 

So I think it would help both parties to have a better sense what 

specific skills are we trying to develop or improve and perfect 

through this mentoring. 

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24 

Mr. NEUMANN. So long as you recognize that some of what you 

are trying to mentor is not a specific skill, but a sort of general 

ability to react to problems. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Ambassador Neumann, as you pointed out in your testimony, although State has established requirements for promotion to the senior ranks, the Academy reported 

that it is concerned that officers will be unprepared because the department does not monitor their progress toward meeting the requirements. 

My question to you is what steps should the department take to 

make sure its officers are prepared to enter the senior ranks? 

Mr. NEUMANN. Very briefly, so that I do not recapitulate all our 

recommendations, I think they have done a pretty good job in the 

Career Development Program of laying out the basic things that 

are necessary. What is needed now is the how, how are you going 

to make sure officers get the skills you have already identified, and 

part of that is informal training, as we have talked about. Part of 

it is in mentoring. 

Part of it will be whether the department has the capacity to actually allow people to take the training which it has identified. The 

one piece that we have particularly focused on here as well is to 

look at assignments as being related to training. Right now, decisions are made pretty much exclusively on the short-term needs of 

the service and the short-term focus of the officer. 

We think there ought to be a third piece of that so that the assignments in particular career tracks help officers to develop the 

skills for the future. That kind of thinking will only be possible if 

the role of the central personnel system is strengthened in the assignments process. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Neumann, the Academy’s report 

states that employees of the Office of Career Development and Assignment are not trained to offer career advice or conduct the 

workforce planning. The report also points out that most of the office’s staff are in the Foreign Service, which brings important expertise, but means that people leave after 2 or 3 years’ rotations. 

You recommend establishing a cadre of 7 to 10 permanent 

human resource specialists for this office. Would you please elaborate on how this would benefit the service? 

Mr. NEUMANN. The office has to maintain, sir, a balance between 

its various requirements, including needs of the officer, needs of 

the service. Part of that balance requires that Foreign Service Officers, who actually know what the jobs are overseas and the conditions, remain in charge of the office. I think we would have a serious problem if you ended up with a service in the field being run 

entirely by people who do not serve in the field. 

But there is also a need that my colleagues who worked on this 

report identified, which I believe in, for a strengthening of the 

numbers of the permanent staff, that is, the Civil Service staff, to 

provide the underpinning of continuity and knowledge so that the 

continuity on the one hand and the foreign experience on the other 

make a blending in the office to perform a stronger role. 

Our estimation was, as you stated. That is our estimation. One 

could find that it needs a few more or a few less of the permanent 

cadres as one actually experiments with it. But the notion of the 

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increase is so that you have enough permanent staff to provide the 

expanded basis of continuity, which we believe would be useful. 

Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. In Ambassador Neumann’s testimony, he stated 

that we should train for certainty and educate for uncertainty. He 

emphasized the importance of intellectual preparation. 

The Academy recommends that mid-career officers receive a year 

of professional education and that it be required for promotion to 

the senior ranks. Would you please discuss this and the advantages 

of allowing officers a year of advance study? 

Mr. NEUMANN. Certainly. This is, as you know, Senator Akaka, 

a constant which has been long and well established with our military colleagues. It is exactly this approach that has led to people 

like General David Petraeus having a doctoral degree from an advanced university. 

There is a quality to education, to reflection on broader issues, 

which you cannot get simply by specific training and I think that 

is actually a notion which underlies the whole notion of liberal education in universities in America. I can tell you that my own experience of going to the National War College back in 1990, 1991 bore 

this out. 

In an anecdotal fashion I expected to have fun. I had no idea how 

much I was going to learn and I learned a great deal, not only 

about how to interoperate with my colleagues in the military, but 

giving me a chance to step back from the day-to-day pressures of 

resolving specific things or being trained for specific skills and 

think about how do you integrate these things more broadly and 

what are the downsides to any course of action and how do you 

mitigate the kind of things that senior managers have to think 

about? 

There is a degree to which these will always be a little bit 

ephemeral. You can always more easily define specific skill sets 

than what it means to be an educated person and one capable of 

reflection at senior levels. But I am quite sure working up in this 

diverse body we call the Congress that you are able to identify both 

sets of personalities. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Ambassador. Ms. Johnson, in your 

testimony, you stated that AFSA would like to see greater recognition of the importance of a common foundation of professional identity, standards, and expectations within the Foreign Service. This 

may be difficult to develop if training is too focused on narrowly defined technical skills. 

Would you please explain the importance of having a clear sense 

of unity of effort and what steps the department can take to address this? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it has been 

noted by a number of the witnesses this morning the diversity that 

is reflected in the Foreign Service of today. We have a very talented group of people from all over the United States and every 

measure of diversity that you can think of entering our service 

today and this very varied background I think underscores the 

need, even the heightened need for trying to develop a common 

shared foundation for across all of our sort of specializations, cones 

and other subdivisions that we have. 

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26 

AFSA conducted a couple of surveys last year to all entry-level 

and mid-level officers asking them what they thought their profession was, what requirements, were there any core values, was 

there anything? And the responses that we got were all over the 

place. It was very evident that there was no unified set of commonly held values or understanding about what the professional 

requirements were. 

We think that these surveys should be followed up on and that 

the department needs to develop a process that involves both top 

down and bottom up input into developing this kind of a sort of 

common culture. I think it once existed in the Foreign Service. It 

has diminished for a variety of reasons and I think it is very important today, and AFSA believes that this needs to be reestablished 

and we would look forward to having a role in this process. But it 

is something that has to be participatory and has to be both top 

down and bottom up in our view. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. This is my final question for this 

panel. What are your top three recommendations for addressing 

employee training and education at the State Department? 

Mr. NEUMANN. My first one— 

Senator AKAKA. Ambassador Neumann. 

Mr. NEUMANN. Thank you. My first one, Senator Akaka, is the 

continuation of personnel growth and the second is funding. When 

we did the report in 2008 that you supported us on, the report on 

A Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future, you will remember, sir, 

that we documented a broken diplomacy. Thirty percent of our language-designated positions lacked qualified officers, there were 

staffing gaps, and so on. 

If resources are reduced, if the Foreign Service is cut, as some 

recommend, then we will go back to a broken diplomacy incapable 

of meeting the Nation’s security demands overseas. I think perhaps 

I should have said that our first recommendation is that diplomacy 

as a whole be looked at as a part of national security. If we do not 

do that, I think the specific recommendations fall. 

The second is people. The third is money. Recognizing that there 

have to be cuts, I would say. Where there are cuts they, in our recommendation, should be heavy on the program side, as painful as 

some of those will be to their individual program constituencies, because programs can be made up fairly quickly when the economic 

situation improves. 

But problems in the institution take years and years to rectify. 

The last 2 years you have helped push the funding that has allowed this increase in training positions. But it takes 2 years to 

train an Arabic-language qualified officer to the same level we 

train in 6 months in French, and you have to back up from that 

to, of course, from funding decisions, to the allocation, to the development of programs, to the recruitment of people, to putting them 

in a program. 

So undoing the problems of the past is not something we have 

accomplished yet. We are on the path to it. If we cease the path 

we will cease the progress. Thank you very much, sir. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Ms. Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I think the first would be a clearer definition of 

what we are training for, what we really need to be doing. Beyond 

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the very broad definition that appears, I think, in the State Department’s annual training plan today, which talks about the purpose 

of the department’s training, is to develop the men and women our 

Nation requires to fulfill our leadership role in world affairs and 

advance and defend United States interests, and that is at a sort 

of 35,000-foot level. 

I think we need a clear definition of what that means operationally in order to get all the training, professional education right 

and make sure that we are doing the right things in an era of scare 

resources. 

Second, greater focus on the needs of the institution as opposed 

to the individual. I have benefited myself from—as an individual, 

I have loved my career, every bit of it. I am not sure it was always 

the thing that was in the best interest of the institution. 

And more on creating multi-functional officers. I am not sure 

that we can afford anymore to have specialization, cone-based specialization. I think the more we can encourage multi-functional officers who are multi-capable, the better off we will be. 

And then finally, more focus on education that conveys knowledge in addition to the skills that we need to develop as diplomats. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. This has been helpful to our Committee and I want to say thank you very much for your responses, 

and I want to thank all of our witnesses today. 

It is clear to me that State has made great efforts to equip its 

workforce to meet 21st Century challenges. However, more work 

needs to be done. Many of the recommendations discussed today 

are contingent upon Congress passing an appropriations bill. The 

Senate currently is considering continuing resolutions for the rest 

of fiscal year 2011 that would meet House Republicans half way 

thus far. 

I hope we work quickly to finalize these appropriations. I am 

committed to working with State and stakeholders like the Academy and AFSA to support your efforts to enhance State Department training. Again, I want to say thank you. 

The hearing record will be open for 1 week for additional statements or questions other members may have. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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