The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2020 47 rate for fellows it is close to 10 percent, while the rate for the entire Foreign Service fluctuates between 2 and 3 percent annu- ally. Although the rate may be three times higher for fellows than non-fellows, do not focus your attention here. Because the total number of fellows is small, exactly two fellows need to leave each year for the fellows’ attrition rate to be greater than the Service’s attrition rate. But for the department’s response to be correct—namely that the fellows’ attrition rate has caused the noise in promotion rates—the number of departed minority fellows would need to be disproportionately higher than the number of departed non-fellow minorities. At a 10 percent attrition rate, six fellows leave a year. In comparison, near the 2 percent attrition rate, exactly 183 officers left the Foreign Service in 2019, of which 43 were minorities (see the EEOC Fiscal Year 2019 Foreign Service Management Directive 715 Work Force Tables). The baseline numbers prove that the department’s assertion is incorrect. As a matter of fact, GAO modeled its data on the total number of employees in the Foreign Service, thus accounting for all gener- alist and specialist minorities and women. The department’s response completely obfuscated a possible real issue—namely, that promotion to FS-3 constitutes a barrier for minorities. The department must take a hard look at the inter- nal factors that truly affect minorities and women in the work- force, and must provide more data and be transparent in commu- nicating correlation anomalies and advancement barriers. By omission, the department has thrown a wrench in the wheel of efforts to sustain diversity gains. After decades without tangible evidence that minorities and women officers in the Service collectively enjoy empowerment and progression, now is the time to officially declare retention a problem and actively address the inadequacies within the culture that do not encour- age us to stay. n If promotion is based on identifying the future capacity of officers to lead, inspire and innovate, then the entire evaluation system needs to reflect that.