which ideas it wants to advance. But those ideas need to be communicated to Congress early on, with a focus on explaining why the changes are needed and identifying how Congress can help sustain any changes past the current administration. Successful reform efforts will not be implemented in four- or even eightyear cycles; they require funding and oversight from Congress and cultural adoption from within the bureaucracy. Congress’ best tool for implementing reforms is a State Department authorization, but lawmakers have failed to pass a stand-alone authorization bill since 2002. While State Department authorizations have been tacked on to the National Defense Authorization Act for the last three years of the Biden administration, these bills only authorized appropriations on a narrow set of issues rather than broadly authorizing State Department accounts. Furthermore, as the 2025 CRS report “Foreign Relations Reauthorization: Background and Issues” highlights, attaching State authorization to NDAA legislation includes committees in the decision-making that would not otherwise have oversight authority over State. This contributes to the narrowing of the authorizations and prevents funding for new initiatives. For a future State authorization to be successful, the administration will need to work with Congress, specifically the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to understand what is politically viable. State should strive to make Foreign Service (FS) and Civil Service (CS) officers available to speak with Congress about how structural changes would affect their jobs, which could provide useful information to Congress while helping obtain buy-in from the workforce. Use the Congressional Commission The Congressional Commission on Reform and Modernization of the Department of State, which was authorized in 2023 and fully funded in 2024, offers a useful forum for information sharing between the executive branch and Congress. The commission was designed to bring together lawmakers, State’s leadership, and outside experts to elevate not just useful concepts for reform but insights into how they can be implemented. The commission should be utilized by both sides to put forward concepts for reform and test their viability before going through the legislative process. There is a risk that the commission will fall by the wayside under the Trump administration, but members of Congress and the administration should staff and employ the body for their own benefit. The commission should prioritize engaging the longestserving members of the FS to develop an understanding of what the opportunities and impediments are to receiving institutional buy-in for reforms. The QDDR was an earnest attempt to implement a procedure that could be adopted by future administrations, but it was so far detached from the experience of State Department personnel that it came to be seen as an aspirational review divorced from practical plans for implementation. Highlevel reviews that do not receive support from the workforce risk bureaucratic slow-rolling and quiet resistance. The reform process should engage with employees early and in depth but should not off-load responsibility onto them. There is a risk of tasking the workforce with a burdensome review, only for their own reform proposals to be dismissed; when that happens, the process will ultimately be seen as superficial by those whose buy-in matters most. Mandated integrated country strategies, for example, create a large amount of work for missions but rarely lead to significant policy changes and are thus seen by many in the FS as perfunctory. Asking the workforce to develop ideas for reform without providing the resources needed to implement the ideas is a recipe for a disillusioned bureaucracy. State Department reform does not have a finish line to be crossed. To be successful, reforms need to be implemented through a consistent and iterative process, which has thus far been lacking. There is a rich body of ideas for changes to State Department operations, but implementation of those concepts has failed because of a disjointed relationship between the State Department workforce, executive branch leadership, and Congress. As the Trump administration attempts to reshape State, it should view both Congress and State’s workforce as integral partners in this process rather than impediments to its vision. It will only be through the work of department staff, funded and overseen by Congress, that any positive reforms will last beyond the current administration. n To be successful, reforms need to be implemented through a consistent and iterative process, which has thus far been lacking. THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 31
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