The Foreign Service Journal, September 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2016 41 Kishan Rana is an author, teacher and former ambas- sador for India. He is currently an honorary fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies in Delhi. A n interesting new criterion has emerged to assess foreign ministry performance. Some analysts believe that the serious- ness and care with which a foreign ministry handles diplomatic training is a powerful proxy indicator of the effi- cacy of that ministry. Several elements lie behind this. Training represents an investment in the future; like all investments, it should be examined in terms of the value delivered. Besides financial resources, there is also the investment of time by officials, trainees and training organizers to be considered. After all, a foreign ministry’s most valuable assets are the people it employs, not its fine embassy buildings and the outward diplomacy spectacle. A diplomat would do well to ask: How does the system in my country reflect these facts in its training programs? One might add another key query: Given that half or more of the diplomats are stationed abroad at any point of time, do we use the distance learning option? And if not, why not? The U.K. Model’s Novel Features In January 2015, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office established the Diplomatic Academy with features and Diplomatic Training: New Trends In foreign ministries around the world, training is undergoing intensification and expansion. BY K I SHAN RANA approaches that deserve attention. (See “The Diplomatic Acad- emy: A First for Britain’s Foreign Office” by Jon Davies, Foreign Service Journal , July-August 2015.) With the FCO abandoning its earlier stand that all needed skills will come “on the job,” a holdout against professional training has fallen. Some years earlier, the Quai d’Orsay had established its training institution. The U.S. National Foreign Affairs Train- ing Center (still referred to as FSI, the Foreign Service Institute), established in 1947, was an important resource for the FCO in developing the Diplomatic Academy. Like the United States and France, the U.K. will not conduct lengthy induction courses for new entrants. Instead, they have opted for what I call a “focused selective training” model, which is practiced by Australia, France, the United States and others. In this model new entrants receive an orientation and then get to work at the ministry; newly appointed officials also attend short courses on specific themes. The alternate model—“full-time entry training”—is practiced by Germany, India and almost all of the Latin American coun- tries. Courses run for 12 to 24 months. During this time, new entrants are also exposed to work at the ministry and embassies abroad, but for short sessions. This means that even after joining the diplomatic service, trainees do not get to do full-time work until they graduate a year or two later. Malaysia’s hybrid model is interesting—after initial orientation, new entrants get to work at the foreign ministry, going to a full-time, four- to six-month training course at the end of about two years, before their first overseas assignment. It is an excellent combination of both methods. Four aspects of the U.K.’s Diplomatic Academy are striking. FOCUS ON DIPLOMATIC TRADECRAFT