The Foreign Service Journal, September 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2016 43 In Asia, the only foreign service training group that meets annually does so under the “ASEAN-plus-three” formula, which brings together diplomatic training agencies from ASEAN’s 10 members and China, Japan and South Korea. Attending one of these sessions as an invitee about a decade ago, I had suggested that it would be worthwhile holding the meeting under the rubric of a wider group, to ensure that countries such as Aus- tralia, India and New Zealand, and some others could be added to this dialogue. It seems logical to extend the footprint of such regional consultation. In India, the Manmohan Singh government decided in 2009 that all Indian civil servants in the different senior executive services (there are a score of these, all recruited through the Union Public Services Commission) must undergo several weeks of training before promotions at three key levels take effect, broadly between 12 to 28 years of service. At one stroke, “lifelong training” went into operation. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs, which has run its own Foreign Service Institut e since 1986, complied with this mandate, partly by outsourcing a large part of the training to a major management training insti- tute in Hyderabad. In my view, this is not the wisest method: It is better to build up one’s own training capacity. The requirements of diplomatic training are different from the requirements of the domestic civil service. The latter is pre- occupied with project management and national development, subjects that are well-researched by the management institutes. Yet such institutes seldom study diplomatic training. It is far better for foreign service academies to look to the experience of counterparts in other countries. E-Learning Trends While e-learning remains significantly underutilized by many foreign ministries, Canada was a pioneer in applying information technology. I saw this firsthand during a visit to Ottawa in 2003, when I was persuaded to produce two “self- learning courses” for the Canadian Foreign Service Institute , overcoming my doubts on the quality and method of self-paced delivery. In a way, those self-learning modules resemble mas- sive open online courses (MOOCs) that major U.S. universities and others have subsequently developed for the benefit of hun- dreds of thousands of users, mostly on a gratis basis. The foreign ministries in Mexico and the United States are among the other major users of distance learning. Our experience at DiploFoundation (I have been on its part-time faculty for 15 years) has been that to work well, distance teaching in diplomatic studies should involve teach- ers in intense dialogue with class participants, with class size limited to about 20 to 25. The British FCO method appears to be different, with what seems to be a light touch of faculty inter- vention; it is innovative, presuming that trainees are sufficiently motivated to manage learning by themselves. This bears close observation and assessment. Balancing resources, both material and human, against evolving needs is a constant challenge, particularly for small countries. Many of them rely largely on free training courses offered by other countries, often with free air travel thrown in. A problem is that some of these courses are heavy on “selling” the host country, and offer rather less by way of professional train- ing. An exception is a two-week course that Malaysia’s Institute for Diplomatic Training offers in Kuala Lumpur on negotiation, a subject that small foreign ministries cannot easily access. At the same time, even small states can develop their own pro- grams. They can find trainers from among their own diplomatic corps, former ambassadors and university academics. Consid- erable teaching material is available under “creative commons” licenses, such as the lecture texts developed by the teaching faculty of DiploFoundation. Does training get the attention it merits from the senior level of the foreign ministry? As a diplomatic studies teacher, I have wondered about this. The answer lies within each ministry of foreign affairs. My overall impression is that though the situ- ation has been improving in recent years, it remains far from ideal. What is worth reasserting to the top management of foreign ministries is that the training function is at the core of human resource development. As with any knowledge-driven organiza- tion, developing and managing this resource is a vital respon- sibility, on which the performance of the entire diplomatic system hinges. n Each year, 140 Chinese diplomats are selected through an intense competition to attend one-year courses at some of the best universities around the world.