The Foreign Service Journal, March 2009

“Do More with Less” Mantra On the Way Out? In a Jan. 13 article, ProPublica pointed to the State Department’s Glo- bal Repositioning Program as a “half- baked fiasco,” a “troubled” program that the new Secretary of State would have to deal with ( www.propublica. org/article/the-foreign-services-half- baked-fiasco-0113 ). The nonprofit online newsroom spotlighted FSJ Associate Editor Shawn Dorman’s comprehensive analysis of the GRP, “Global Repositioning in Per- spective,” written in October 2008 and published in the January issue of the Journal ( www.afsa.org/fsj/jan09/glo balRepositioning.pdf ). A key feature of former Secretary of State Con- doleezza Rice’s transformational diplo- macy strategy, in effect its bureaucratic expression, the GRP holds many les- sons—not the least of which is that the longtime State habit of agreeing to “do more with less” may be obsolete. In late November, the State’s Office of the Inspector General issued its own interim review of the GRP. The un- classified summary of OIGReport ISP- I-09-09 is available ( http://oig.state . gov/documents/organization/112 492.pdf ). Significantly, the OIG acknowledges that the effectiveness of the new posi- tions was “limited” by a lack of re- sources and that posts that lost existing positions also lost their ability to ac- complish necessary work (OIG notes that it did not find easy cuts to make). “If repositioning becomes regular- ized,” the OIG concludes, it should be done “largely through additional rather than repositioned personnel.” Is State moving toward a new mantra — “Do more with more; and if you have less, then do less”? Civilian Response Corps Gears Up Recruiting for some 250 Foreign and Civil Service positions in the Civil- ian Response Corps, based in the State Department’s Office of the Coordina- tor for Reconstruction and Stabiliza- tion, is now open ( www.crs.state.gov ) . Formally launched on July 16, 2008, by former Secretary of State Condo- leezza Rice, the CRC is the expedi- tionary, interagency civilian reconstruc- tion and stabilization component of the S/CRS mission ( http://smallwarsjour nal.com/blog/2008/07/civilian- response-corps-launch-1 /). Though under discussion for several years, the Corps’ creation was made possible when Congress included funds for 101 new position in the Supplemental Ap- propriations Act of 2008. Because no single federal agency has all of the relevant expertise, the CRC is a partnership of eight depart- ments and agencies: State, the U.S. Agency for International Develop- ment, Agriculture, Commerce, Health andHuman Services, Homeland Secu- rity, Justice and Treasury. Besides the full-time “active com- ponent,” or CRC-A, the Corps has a standby unit and plans to create a re- serve unit. S/CRS expects to receive additional funding in the Fiscal Year 2009 budget to expand the CRC-A to 250 and standby forces to 2,000. The reserve unit will consist of another 2,000 volunteers from the private sec- tor and state and local governments. CRC-A officers train for, prepare and staff reconstruction and stabiliza- tion operations and conflict prevention and mitigation efforts all over the world. They must be prepared to de- ploy on 48- to 72-hour notice and will C YBERNOTES 10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 9 T his is going to be a challenging time, and it will require 21st-century tools and solutions to meet our problems and seize our opportunities. I'm going to be asking a lot of you. I want you to think outside the proverbial box. I want you to give me the best advice you can. I want you to under- stand there is nothing that I welcome more than a good debate and the kind of dialogue that will make us better. — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at her welcoming ceremony in the State Department, Jan. 22, www.state.gov/video/?videoid=8794088001