The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

• Knowledge of journalism practice, writing and editing; • Public affairs practice and process within the State Department; • Knowledge of higher education institutions; • Familiarity with the broad range of popular and high culture; • Communication and media law and ethics; • Behavioral science principles, including communi- cation models; • Research techniques including polls, media trend studies and focus groups; and, above all, • The ability to define a communication problem and work up a plan to address it. All those requirements come on top of basic abilities like language fluency and sensitivity to the local culture. Improving the skill set of field officers will clearly do as much as anything to afford each ambassador sound advice as well as to account to Washington for host- country public diplomacy. Distance education and on- the-job training may be as necessary to the peripatetic PD workforce as the formal FSI courses. These tech- niques will pay even greater dividends for the Foreign Service Nationals who operate the public diplomacy sections. The “Best Practices” Web site mentioned above speaks to this need, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Large global organizations now offer a range of options for their members to share knowledge, from online man- uals and approved instruction to informal messaging cen- ters, where one member can post a question and others who have worked the same problem can offer advice. State needs not just a Web site for “Best Practices,” but an integrated, searchable portal inside the enterprise net- work. The most critical challenge for State’s PD leadership is not to get more appropriations for new programs. It is to develop a well-trained field component and to impose baseline standards and processes to measure results. Those are the keys to building confidence in our nation’s public diplomacy. F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51