THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2024 29 free up diplomats to focus on our core mission: fostering international relationships, negotiating with foreign counterparts, and advancing national interests on the global stage. First, our diplomatic corps is overworked and stressed, as seen in the State Department’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS): The percentage of personnel who believe their workload is reasonable has dropped in the last four years, falling from 62 percent in 2020 to 48 percent in 2023. The Global Satisfaction Index at State dropped by seven points over the same period, underperforming other large agencies. We have too few people trying to undertake too many missions around the world. This dissatisfaction not only affects morale; it also undermines the department’s ability to attract and retain talent, further exacerbating the challenges it faces in an increasingly complex and resource-constrained global environment. Second, our diplomatic operations are simply more complex today. As Secretary Antony Blinken explained in his modernization speech in 2021, we need more expertise in a broader array of areas: climate, global health, cyber security and emerging technologies, economics, and multilateral diplomacy, among others. Building teams (and an organization) that incorporate multiple types of expertise is hard—coordination costs increase, and mastering those skills takes precious time in an organization already stretched thin. AI won’t solve these problems on its own. But it is a critical ingredient in addressing them. The alternatives aren’t feasible: The cost of our personnel overseas increases every year, and Congress has clearly signaled that we will not grow our way out of the problem. The multiple crises in the world limit our ability to “pivot” away from any part of the world (or any major area of work). Our only choices are to become more efficient in our work (i.e., offload administrative work) and become more effective (i.e., use actionable insights gained from automated data analysis to spend more time on work and relationships that will deliver value). Continuing with the status quo is to become weaker, less resilient, and less competitive as an employer and a diplomatic force. Data Accessibility and Cultural Change So how do we avoid missing the moment? Our problem is not technology but the department’s culture. We have much of the underlying technology we need, with more coming online every day. In 2021, the State Department launched “Data.State,” an internal platform that serves as a departmentwide repository for shared data and provides department staff access to analytics products and data science tools. Department practitioners are already using generative AI for unclassified work, with a wide range of best practices shared through the AI for Public Diplomacy (AI4PD) campaign. The department is working toward provisioning access to multiple generative AI tools that draw on official, nonpublic information within the next six months. The StateChat tool deployed this spring is an example. All AI capabilities depend on having accurate, relevant, and (relatively) complete data. This will be our greatest challenge. Information and data stewardship remain largely localized at State. Information is often stored in fragmented systems, captured in ad hoc ways, and hoarded by individuals, hindering accessibility and utility. While the Center for Analytics has done impressive work—making data more accessible, placing chief data officers in bureaus across the department, and ensuring that the right technology is in place—it is not enough. In part, this is a business process challenge: laying out ground rules at the office, bureau, and agency level for how we structure, store, and share data. But the far larger issue is cultural: We often don’t want to share information, because we are worried about whether others will understand it the same way we do or treat it with the same discretion that we demand. This is a phenomenon I witnessed as the department rolled out its first enterprise contact relationship management system between 2017 and 2020. This fragmented, stove-piped environment risks us replicating the problems we encountered with other technology adoptions, including both email and Teams: Rather than enhancing productivity, new technology tools have become sources of inefficiency because of a culture that fails to prioritize their effective use. We could end up with thousands of separately trained AI systems, all with incomplete information—and, consequently, drastically limited utility. The result could be a workforce mired in yet more internal coordination and in-house work, far removed from the proactive and strategic engagement that diplomacy requires. The Path Forward Addressing these challenges requires technological innovation through data accessibility and a cultural shift toward open information-sharing. Data Accessibility. Initiatives like Data.State represent a promising start toward making the department’s vast data assets visible, accessible, and interoperable. But we have to go further in unlocking the dramatically siloed data if we ever hope to truly leverage AI to generate insights and support evidence-based decisionmaking. AI modernization will rely on quality data being shared across the organization. Our current cultural norms and data policies hinder the rapid advances that AI can deliver.
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