The Foreign Service Journal, October 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2021 25 Speaking Out is the Journal ’s opinion forum, a place for lively discussion of issues affecting the U.S. Foreign Service and American diplomacy. The views expressed are those of the author; their publication here does not imply endorsement by the American Foreign Service Association. Responses are welcome; send them to journal@afsa.org . nificant engagement between designers, programmers and users. GTM’s Talent- Map and IRM’s eDiplomacy are initiatives that have put the user at the center of design efforts. We need more. Addressing the Problem To begin this process for a product that benefits transferring officers, we recom- mend starting with something familiar that begins a conversation and creates a feedback loop. Creation of a suite of trans- fer-note templates would immediately start to informwhat knowledge is impor- tant to capture in a personnel transfer. Storing those documents in the cloud would provide information that the Knowledge Leadership Division could then leverage to begin basic machine learning to automatically produce a package of transfer information that is then curated by the employee, for their successor. To take this to the next level, we rec- ommend that the department tailor exist- ing software, including Microsoft Teams and Salesforce’s CRM, and introduce machine learning capabilities that would tag, compile and expedite the produc- tion of these packages for our transfer- ring officers. It is one more step toward a “world-class knowledge management organization.” This is an old problem for the depart- ment, and fixing it should be a top priority. We believe very little needs to be spent to fix the problem. We have all the tools at our disposal now to make for smooth and seamless transitions. Implementing even some of the recommendations will improve performance and morale, par- ticularly in hardship posts that suffer from frequent rotations. Further, our menu of solutions does not just address knowledge manage- ment for transferring officers. It is a step toward addressing the department’s broader KM problems. n