Report Contents
Summary of Review
Prompted by a Department of State-wide exercise to revise all locally employed (LE) staff position titles, in FY 2014 the Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources of the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (R/PPR) launched an initiative to create updated LE staff position descriptions. The goal of the Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative (PDSI) 1 was to enhance the ability of the approximately 2,600 public diplomacy LE staff at 186 missions worldwide to carry out more audience-focused, result-driven programs.2 After OIG inspections from FY 2017 through FY 2020 identified concerns about the length of time required to implement the initiative worldwide and the resulting impact on section efficiency due to outdated LE staff position descriptions, OIG initiated this review of the Department of State’s (Department) implementation of PDSI.3
Public diplomacy LE staff structures and job descriptions had not been significantly updated since the 1970s, despite dramatic changes in global communications and the 1999 merger of the U.S. Information Agency into the Department.4 The new PDSI position descriptions shifted the focus of LE staff work from programs and functions to audiences, strategic content, and resource management. OIG’s objectives5 for this review were to assess whether R/PPR followed Department and public diplomacy guidance and best practices in developing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating the initiative.
In this review, OIG found that while R/PPR made efforts to modify procedures and implement lessons learned from the first few years of PDSI implementation, deficiencies in senior leadership involvement, project management, resource planning, communication with stakeholders, and training continued to hamper the implementation of the initiative. As of October 2020, just 36 missions, or 19 percent of overseas Public Diplomacy Sections, had fully implemented the initiative. Because of the low number of missions that had fully implemented the initiative at the time of the inspection, OIG was unable to fully assess the initiative’s effectiveness. However, OIG made six recommendations to help improve PDSI’s implementation procedures. In its comments on the draft report, R/PPR concurred with all six recommendations. OIG considers all six recommendations resolved. The office’s response to each recommendation and OIG’s reply can be found in the Recommendations section of this report. The office’s formal written response is reprinted in its entirety in Appendix B.
1 The initiative at different times had been called the Locally Employed Staff Initiative, the Staffing Modernization Initiative for Local Employees, and the PD Staffing Modernization Initiative. At the time of the inspection, R/PPR used the title, “Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative.”
2 Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, “2020 Public Diplomacy Strategic Plan.”
3 In 2016, R/PPR and the Bureau of Global Talent Management (formerly known as the Bureau of Human Resources) sent email guidance to embassies that discouraged filling public diplomacy LE staff vacancies or revising position descriptions until the staffing initiative was implemented at that mission. Over time, an increasing number of position descriptions became outdated as sections waited for implementation.
4 “Administrative Timeline of the Department of State 1990-1999,” Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/departmenthisory/timeline/1990-1999.
5 See Appendix A.
Report Terms
Report Recommendations
The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources, in coordination with the regional bureaus, should develop and implement a plan for responding to Public Diplomacy Sections’ needs for increased salary costs and severance pay, in accordance with Department guidance.
The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources, in coordination with the Bureau of Global Talent Management, should review and issue worldwide guidance for Public Diplomacy Sections seeking to revise locally employed staff position descriptions before the Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative is implemented at their embassy.
The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources should evaluate the classification of senior press locally employed staff positions at missions that have completed the Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative implementation process, make any necessary adjustments to the framework job descriptions so that classification of these positions is consistent with similar positions at other missions, and apply any lessons-learned for missions awaiting implementation.
The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources, in coordination with the regional bureaus, should establish two-way communication procedures and create and distribute Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative briefing materials to all public diplomacy officers, including to public affairs officers before beginning their overseas assignments, and to locally employed staff.
The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources should provide regional bureau public diplomacy offices complete information on the Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative, including monitoring and evaluation results and budgetary implications, in accordance with Department guidance.
The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources, in coordination with the Foreign Service Institute, should develop and implement a training plan with short-, medium-, and long-term objectives that address how to train public diplomacy officers and locally employed staff in core competencies based on new position descriptions for Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative implementation.