Executive Summary of Findings and Recommendations

Introduction: Public diplomacy—the effort to understand, inform and influence foreign publics in support of foreign policy objectives—has never been more important to the security of our nation than it is today. The challenges confronting U.S. public diplomacy (PD) are varied and there is no single easy fix for them. Getting the human resources dimension of public diplomacy right, however, can go a long way toward enhancing the overall effectiveness of our nation’s outreach to the world. This report casts a spotlight on this important basket of issues and offers some concrete recommendations for improvement.

Section I: The Department of State makes no special effort to recruit individuals into the PD career track who would bring into the Foreign Service experience or skills specifically relevant to the work of communicating with and influencing foreign publics. The Commission recommends that the Department make a more concerted effort to recruit candidates for the PD career track who have experience and skills that are more directly relevant to the conduct of public diplomacy.

Section II: The Foreign Service Officer Test and Oral Assessment do not specifically test for public diplomacy instincts and communication skills. The Commission recommends that the Department modify its examination process, particularly the Oral Assessment, to include questions and tasks directly germane to the conduct of public diplomacy.

Section III: Public diplomacy training has never been stronger; nevertheless, it is not yet strong enough, and a number of conspicuous, and serious, blind-spots in the Department’s public diplomacy training persist. The Commission recommends that the Department’s Foreign Service Institute develop courses, comparable in quality to graduate-level university courses, in the area of communication theory, with special emphasis on political communication/rhetoric, advertising/marketing theory, and public opinion analysis; and that the Department establish a nine-month in-depth public diplomacy course for mid- to senior-level PD officers modeled on that currently offered to rising economic officers.

Public affairs officers (PAOs) view themselves, and are viewed by others, more as managers and administrators than as expert communicators.

Section IV: The Department of State’s employee evaluation report (EER) form lacks a section specifically devoted to public diplomacy outreach; it thus contains no inherent requirement that State employees actually engage in such outreach. Public diplomacy officers are being asked to spend the overwhelming majority of their time on administration and management, not outreach. The Commission recommends that the Department build a specific PD requirement into the EER form itself, whereby Foreign Service officers (FSOs) are required to undertake a certain number of outreach events per rating period in order to be eligible for promotion that cycle; and that the Department require that all PD officers include in their work requirement objectives one or more specific tasks of directly engaging and influencing foreign publics on matters salient to current U.S. foreign policy or American society.

Section V: Though public diplomacy is now clearly built into the State Department structure in a way that it was not prior to the 1999 consolidation, it is more difficult to judge whether Department officials are taking public diplomacy into consideration in actual foreign policy decision-making to a greater degree, or with greater evident effect, than was the case prior to consolidation. The current bureaucratic arrangement via which PD is integrated into the Department’s geographic bureaus, while generally deemed satisfactory by the current cohort of directors of these offices, is somewhat anomalous. The Commission recommends that the Department undertake a zero-based review of the PD area office staffing structure to determine if the current arrangement is functioning optimally.

Section VI: In the nearly nine years since the consolidation of the USIA into the State Department in 1999, the overseas public diplomacy staffing structure has remained essentially unchanged. Public affairs officers (PAOs) view themselves, and are viewed by others, more as managers and administrators than as expert communicators. The Commission recommends that the Department undertake a zero-based review of the overseas PD staffing model to determine if the current staffing structure, particularly at large posts, continues to make sense in the post-USIA era, in which public diplomacy is no longer the endeavor of an independent USG agency; and that the Department require that all PAOs, including those at large posts, have at least one work requirement entailing substantive engagement with the host-country public.

Section VII: The integration that the 1999 consolidation was supposed to bring about remains elusive; PD officers continue to be significantly under-represented in the senior-most ranks of Department management. Persistent under-representation is not just a matter of equity and morale; it is also emblematic of a lack of progress on the overarching issue of the integration of PD into the core work of the Department. The Commission recommends that the Department appoint suitably qualified PD officers to senior positions within the State Department with approximately the same frequency that it appoints other career Foreign Service officers to such positions, thus eliminating the “glass ceiling” that continues to prevent PD officers from rising to the same levels as other Foreign Service officers.