The Foreign Service Journal, October 2009

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 45 • A key reason we don’t do well on classwide promo- tions is because our accomplishments are long-term or in- tangible. We can’t write in our Employee Evaluation Report that the new prime minister credits his Interna- tional Visitor trip 15 years earlier with changing his atti- tude toward capitalism. Nor can we prove that the seminar we organized last year on the Freedom of In- formation Act just led the host country to pass its own Freedom of Information Act. On the press side, it’s hard to write that the absence of an anti-American demon- stration or editorial is due to our efforts. • With PD officers serving less time in those jobs and people from other tracks doing a public diplomacy tour or two, there is less opportunity for hands-on training for PD officers. PAOs, IOs and CAOs all need previous experience to be effective as press and cultural officers. • Whether it’s because of the severity of the deficit of mid-level PD officers or because public diplomacy work is undervalued, a disproportionate number of those po- sitions were “frozen” — that is, not filled in this last round of the assignment process. This has set up a vi- cious cycle in which there are fewer and fewer opportu- nities for mid-level officers to hone their skills and knowledge. • Instead, many of those jobs are going to entry-level officers. This means that mid-level PD jobs are being filled with people who don’t have any experience, de- priving those already in the Foreign Service of the chance to sharpen their skills. This disconnect will only become worse once the current hiring surge kicks in. We understand that very recently, the Bureau of Human Resources, in consultation with the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (known as R), created some 20 new entry-level PD positions, which R and HR will work together to staff. This is a promising development, but not nearly enough consid- ering the number of new PD officers expected to enter the Foreign Service in the next couple of years. Already public diplomacy is one of the most popular career tracks chosen by entry-level officers. F O C U S