The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

14 OCTOBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL M aking the rounds in some Foreign Service circles is a geocoding system that could save your life. What3words calls its service “the simplest way to communicate precise location,” and emergency and government services from South Africa to Mongolia have begun to use it. What3words has divided the entire world into squares, each three meters square in size. The service assigns a unique set of three words to each of the 57 trillion squares. You can download the smartphone app to use the service anywhere, or go to the What3words website. For example, type in the AFSA headquarters address, 2101 E St NW in Washington, D.C., and the front entrance comes up as “bells.hidden. reveal.” Put in Department of State, and the 21st Street entrance to State is “larger.shift.issues.” The three-word addresses are easy to say and share, and are as accurate as GPS coordinates, the company notes. For instance, they note that the GPS coordinates for their headquarters in Lon- don—51.520847, -0.19552100—are a mouthful to say compared to the three-word phrase “filled.count. Site of the Month: what3words.com soap” that means the same thing. FSOs on the popular FS Facebook group Trailing Houses report that some security officers overseas recommend the free service. But it’s important to determine if emergency services where you are located are using it yet. Beyond public safety, What- 3words can be helpful to family members or friends trying to find each other at the mall, sports arena or other public place in the United States or abroad. Using the app, you can send someone your precise location, or open your address in another mapping service such as Google Maps. What3words is avail- able in more than 35 languages. What3words notes that its map- ping service is two-dimensional, however, so if you want someone to know your location when you are in a high-rise building, you will have to give your three-word coordinates plus which floor you are on and your apart- ment or room number. engaged in unprofessional behavior toward staff.” They also reportedly retali- ated against employees who had held their jobs during the Obama administra- tion. Ms. Stull, the report said, referred to some employees as “Obama hold- overs” or “traitors.” Nearly 50 out of 300 domestic IO employees have departed since Amb. Moley took over leadership of the bureau, according to the OIG report, and almost all of them cited poor leadership as one reason that they left the bureau. The State Department’s response was included in the report. Accepting the OIG recommendations, State indicated it would submit a “corrective action plan” within 60 days. The report is the first of two from OIG that investigates allegations that Trump administration political appointees retali- ated against State Department employ- ees, Politico reported, adding that the second report is still being drafted. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the findings “offensive” and said that Amb. Moley should “resign or be fired,” according to Politico . Amb. Moley, in a response to the OIG findings included as an appendix to the report, said the misconduct attributed to him “does not represent the person I am or have ever been.” “I will be the first to admit the failure on my part to have done more to address the situation,” Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told IO employees at an Aug. 29 town hall meeting, according to Foreign Policy . Under Secretary for Political Affairs David Hale, also at the town hall, encouraged IO employees who were hurt by political retaliation to come to him to seek remedies, Foreign Policy reported. “There’s absolutely no doubt that what was going on was completely unacceptable,” Hale is quoted as saying. “Misconduct is a soft word, frankly, to use for what has occurred.” Israel Denies Entry to U.S. Codel I srael’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned U.S. Representa- tives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) from visiting Israel on Aug. 15, hours after President Trump, in a tweet, said that allowing them to visit “would show great weakness.” In July, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer had said that the two congresswomen would be allowed to visit Israel “out of respect for the U.S. Congress and the great alliance