The Foreign Service Journal, March 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2019 21 Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which asks employees to respond to the prompts: “I recommend my organization as a good place to work”; “Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job?”; and “Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your organization?” State hit an all-time high in 2010, with an engagement score of 70.8. It was above the median in 2017 with a score 64. This year’s score plummeted to 60.7; the last time it was this low was 2003, when State scored 59.0. By comparison, NASA was in first place in 2018 with a score of 81.2. The intelligence community as a whole ranked fifth with a score of 66.3. Only the departments of the Air Force, Agriculture and Homeland Security scored lower than State. Homeland Security was last with a score of 53.1. The Partnership for Public Service began compiling the ratings in 2003. “Economic Diplomacy Works” on the American Diplomat Podcast I n a Dec. 18 episode of the American Diplomat podcast called “A Public Ser- vant in the Private Sector,” host Ambassa- dor (ret.) Pete Romero interviews former FSO Laura Lane, who is currently the president of global public affairs at UPS. The two discuss how embassies and U.S. businesses work together overseas. Ms. Lane notes the value of starting her career as an economic officer, explain- ing that it was her job working at U.S. embassies to “advance the kind of policy framework as well as support to businesses that were entering markets, nomatter how challenging those markets were, and it provided a very valuable foundation for me as I moved into the private sector.” She talks about the importance of supporting small- and medium-sized companies operating in the global sec- tor. Foreign governments, she states, are beginning to see that bribery and corrup- tion are choking their economies, and they need to “figure out ways to create the processes and the policy landscape so that everybody can compete on the basis of the value of their goods and the services they provide, and not on whether they can pay to play.” AFSA facilitated these two episodes, as well as several future episodes, as part of its ongoing “Economic Diplomacy Works” initiative. The American Diplomat podcast is produced in partnership with the Ameri- can Academy of Diplomacy and the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. Listen to this episode, and a second one featuring Ms. Lane, “When You Shouldn’t Follow the Rules,” at https://www.amdipstories . org/podcast. Trump Administration Downgrades E.U.’s Status in D.C. O n Jan. 8 the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle broke the news that the State Department had downgraded the European Union’s repre- sentation to the United States sometime in late 2018 without informing the del- egation of the decision. According to Deutsche Welle , the E.U. delegation realized that something was amiss at the Dec. 5 state funeral for George H.W. Bush. An unidentified Washington, D.C.-based European diplomat told DW that at the funeral, E.U. Ambassador David O’Sullivan was not called on in chrono- logical order from longest-serving to new- est ambassador, as protocol dictates, but rather was called last. The E.U. ambassador’s status had been upgraded in September 2016 to the