Category Archives: Org Culture

May 16, 2013 · 2:20 am

State Dept’s Leadership and Mgt School Needs Some Leadership, And It’s Not Alone

State/OIG recently released its inspection of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. It is a chunky report with over 80 pages.  It reviewed the school’s executive direction but also FSI’s various schools. On of the schools reviewed is its Leadership and Management School (FSI/LMS) which is headed by Carol A. Rodley, the dean since November 2011 and a former US Ambassador to Cambodia.  The associate dean is Gail E. Neelon, a civil service official who assumed office in July 2008.

Here is the irony of the day:  the LMS dean’s “tenure has taken a toll on morale.” Excerpt from the IG report’s pretty sparse discussion about the management and leadership issues at the school:

Led by a Foreign Service dean and a Civil Service associate dean, LMS has 4 divisions and 48 staff members, of which 44 are direct-hire employees and 4 are full-time equivalent contractors. The school had an FY 2012 base budget of $2.4 million and a total budget of $3.6 million, which includes $473,000 in reimbursements. LMS is a small but important component of FSI, responsible for teaching leadership skills to senior and mid-level officers. When OIG inspected FSI in 1999, leadership training consisted of a few courses in SPAS. LMS was created in 2000 as part of the Department’s increased emphasis on leadership. It delivers well-received leadership training mandatory for Department employees at various stages in their careers.

Participants praised LMS courses highly. However, the dean’s directive leadership style was criticized by school staff. Although the dean met the FSI front office’s request to attend to management issues left unresolved during an extended period between deans, her tenure has taken a toll on morale. (b)(5)(b)(6) she has taken some steps to be more accessible to staff members and acknowledge them and their work.
[...]
Paper Flow in the Dean’s Office: In April 2012, most LMS staff members complained to the OIG team about the lack of timely actions from the dean’s office on paperwork, pointing to delays, missed deadlines, and unanswered mail. To meet a proposed inspection recommendation, LMS implemented a new system for tracking requests for clearances and approvals.

Read the whole report here: Inspection of the Foreign Service Institute (ISP-I-13-22)

Leadership and management have supposedly been elevated in importance since the tenure of Secretary Powell but in the many nook and crannies of the bureaucracy, it is just a shiny object that is talked about, often admired for its qualities but does not really merit serious attention.

In June 2010, the OIG sent a memo on the need to improved post leadership to the Executive Secretariat of the State Department (at that time Stephen Mull was S/ES; he is now the US Ambassador to Warsaw):

Office of Inspector General (OIG) inspections over the past 4 years have shown that while a majority of posts and bureaus are well run, leadership in a small but significant minority needs to be improved. In a recent OIG survey of employees who are serving or have served in high stress/high threat posts, 45 percent of the respondents cited post leadership as a cause of stress for them or their colleagues. An inspection of the Bureau of African Affairs identified leadership as a problem in certain posts overseas as well as in the bureau itself under its previous management. OIG has found problems in posts in every region, under both career and political ambassadors. The results of poor leadership include reduced productivity and effectiveness, low morale, stress, and curtailments.
[...]
OIG believes that it is the responsibility of the Department to conduct its own assessments, based in part on input from staff and to do so every year, especially at one­ year-tour posts. In many cases, the knowledge that the leaders would be assessed annually would cause them to be more sensitive to how they lead staff. The annual assessment would allow for the early identification of problems and for remedial action in time to have an effect on the management and operations of a post or bureau under each leadership team. In some cases, leaders and mid-level managers will be unable or unwilling to change. In more cases, OIG believes that leaders would be receptive to counseling and training to help them become more effective. These assessments would also provide better support for annual evaluations and help the chief of mission and deputy chief of mission selection committees make better informed recommendations and decisions.

(Read Implementation of a Process to Assess and Improve Leadership and Management of Department of State Posts and Bureaus, ISP-1-10-68)

The 2010 OIG memo cc’ed P: Mr. Burns, who is now one of the Deputy Secretaries; HR – Ms. Powell (who is currently the US Ambassador to India),  MED – Mr. Yun, DS – Mr. Boswell (who got recently eaten by the Benghazi troll) and FSI – Ms. Whiteside (who we learned recently retired after a long tenure at FSI) .

On September 19, 2012, the OIG once again reminded State Management about this same boring topic on leadership with a memo not to the Executive Secretariat but this time to the Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy:

OIG’s FY 2012 inspections found that while 75 percent of ambassadors, deputy chiefs of mission, and principal officers are doing a good to excellent job, 25 percent have weaknesses that, in most cases, have a significant impact on the effectiveness and morale of their posts and certainly warrant intervention by the Department.

One reason for a high percentage of posts requiring leadership attention in the past year is that a number of posts were selected for inspection because OIG received specific indications of weak leadership.
[...]
OIG therefore reiterates the importance it places on adopting an effective assessment and performance improvement system for ambassadors, deputy chiefs of mission, and principal officers. OIG continues to believe that a confidential survey of personnel at post is an.essential element of such a system.

The September 2012 memo only cc’ed two individuals:  DGHR-Linda Thomas-Greenfield (currently the top HR person for the Foreign Service and rumored to be the next A/S for the AF BUreau) and S/ES -Stephen Mull (currently the U.S. Ambassador to Poland).

Read: Memorandum Report, Improving Leadership at Posts and Bureaus (ISP-I-12-48)

The September 2012 OIG memo was careful to point out that “the 75 percent 25 percent figures apply to the posts OIG inspected and not necessarily to the Department as a whole.”

Well, thank heavens for that!

Had the State Department actually adopted an effective assessment and performance improvement system for ambassadors, dcms and principal officers, Diplopundit would probably be a pretty booooring blog.  Perhaps we would be writing fake April Fool’s news  or doodling ourselves to death here  …. but so far there’s been a huge throve of materials to cover ….

 

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March 20, 2013 · 12:14 am

State/OIG on Diplomatic Security’s Special Investigations Division – The Missing Firewall

State’s OIG recently posted online its review of the three divisions in Diplomatic Security’s Directorate of Domestic Operations:  1) the Special Investigations Division (SID), 2) the Criminal Investigations (CR) Division, and 3) the Computer Investigations and Forensics (CIF) Division.

Here are the key findings:

  • The Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) Special Investigations Division (SID), which investigates allegations of criminal and administrative misconduct, lacks a firewall to preclude the DS and Department of State (Department) hierarchies from exercising undue influence in particular cases.
  • DS does not have a comprehensive, up-to-date manual with approved policies and guidelines on how to conduct investigations.
  • DS’s quality assurance measures are not sufficient to ensure that investigations comport with law enforcement standards and powers. DS should use peer reviews to help correct flaws and identify best practices.
  • Frequent agent turnover in DS investigative offices reduces long-term, specialized expertise and hampers complex criminal investigations.
  • The Criminal Fraud Investigations (CFI) branch of the Criminal Investigations (CR) Division should become a new division.
  • DS and the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) have not completed a long-pending memorandum of understanding regarding CA’s Consular Integrity Division (CID).
  • Inspectors found personnel in the three Office of Investigations and Counterintelligence (ICI) divisions to be professional and dedicated to their jobs.

If you ever wonder why “it depends” is a common enough mantra over there, take a look:

The absence of a comprehensive, up-to-date manual increases the potential for errors, particularly for new agents who are forced to rely on on-the-job training. Inspectors discovered uncertainty among SID agents about which warnings to provide subjects prior to their interviews in investigations, though the wrong choice of warning can ruin a potential criminal prosecution. Inspectors were told that SID supervisors have sometimes pursued investigations excessively against other DS agents and that some supervisors have chosen to open cases on every allegation, including for those types of workplace issues that Department managers should ordinarily attempt to handle via other means. The likelihood of such problems increases when clear guidelines are lacking and individual preferences prevail.

Now, it’s not like this is a newly established office where folks are working from scratch. This office has been around forever investigating criminal and admin misconduct. It is utterly absurd  that it does not have an up-to-date manual. The OIG report mercifully did not say which version of the manual this office is operating under;  save folks the embarrassment of having to explain if the manual dates back to Jesse Helms days.

On independence, credibility, external influences and pressures:

 In all matters relating to investigative work, the investigative organization needs to be free, in fact and appearance, from impairments to independence in both organization and attitude. Such independence is essential so that an organization’s decisions about obtaining evidence, conducting interviews, and making recommendations will be impartial and viewed as such by knowledgeable third parties. The credibility of the Department’s investigative organizations and disciplinary system depends on that independence, yet the perception exists among knowledgeable parties that external influences have negatively affected some SID investigations.

SID is one of many offices that report up the normal chain to the principal deputy assistant secretary and director of the Diplomatic Security Service. Foreign Service special agents in SID, 80 percent of whom are junior in rank, ordinarily serve only one tour as an investigator. Subjects of their investigations may include more senior DS agents; other senior DS agents are sometimes hostile witnesses for interviews. The SID supervisors also are in the DS mainstream and subject to regular “up or out” assignment and promotion processes. During inspection interviews, nearly every SID special agent acknowledged being aware that one or more suspects, witnesses, or senior Department officials could one day serve on a promotion board or on a DS assignment panel that would decide the investigator’s career prospects. Although most investigators said that they had not experienced career pressure in any particular cases, some had indeed felt such pressure. Several special agents in SID observed that Civil Service agents with sufficient rank are less susceptible to such pressure, as their careers do not depend on DS assignment panels or Foreign Service promotion boards.

It turns out that the SID chief is an FS-01 position, which, according to the OIG report “leaves any chief who aspires to the Senior Foreign Service vulnerable to pressure from above.”  Unnamed sources also suggested to the OIG team that “having three bureaucratic layers between the SID chief and the DS Assistant Secretary makes sensitive cases vulnerable to multiple types of interference and the leaking of information.” 

The OIG recommends that the Office of the Deputy Secretary (presumably the incoming D/MR who succeeds Mr. Nides) should “restructure the investigative responsibilities currently assigned to the Special Investigations Division. The outcome should include safeguards to prevent any Department of State or Diplomatic Security official from improperly influencing the commencement, course, or outcome of any investigation.”

Let’s see if that happens.

Should have been interesting to know which cases were alleged to have been interfered with, wouldn’t it? That would have been a scream.

Apparently, according to the Dead Men Working blog, “CFSO and AFSA both told State’s OIG that DS investigations into allegations of mis-or-malfeasance by Foreign Service members were subject to outside influence and were occasionally unprofessional.”

They told the OIG seven years ago. Yay!
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February 26, 2013 · 2:14 am

How about an EER Survivor Reality Show via BNET? C’mon, It’ll Be Fun!

We recently got a reminder in our “burn bag” about EERs. Basically, a reminder that it’s a new year, so there will be Employee Evaluation Reports to do this year, just like every year.

There used to be lots of EER talk on the blogosphere prior to April.  But not so much this year. Maybe it’s still early but … anyway, if you’re not terribly familiar about EERs, they’re like taxes and root canals, not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination but gotta be done.

In any case, a whole bunch of folks now write their own EERs.  We wondered briefly if anybody ever give themselves a poor evaluation — such as “this officer take on so much work he makes everyone looks bad;” or “this officer takes mentoring at a new level, acting like a mother hen to new chicks just hatched that she should be promoted at the earliest opportunity.”

Now, you may not know this but this is all very, VERY serious business.  The future of the new global order hinges on this.  Imagine if our future best Paranoidistan negotiator could not get promoted to fulfill his/her destiny because his/her boss did not know how to make him walk on water?  Um, excuse us, because he/she did not know how to make himself/herself walk on water in DS-1829 or DS-5055 or whatever the form is called these days.  Imagine destiny denied due to bad writing.  Yes, that would be awful.  Still, just between us, we happen to think that something drastic needs to be done about this process.  Because — see, how can everyone all be performing in an absolutely outstanding manner? Even that screamer.  Even that micromanager.  Even that arse-kiss ….

And that’s not all — apparently “a misplaced comma or misused word can [snip] rile a promotion panel to the extent that it passes over the employee for promotion.”

So you work your arse off and is absolutely showing potential for the next higher responsibility but because of a misplaced comma on your EER, the promotion panel toasts you crazy? Like — yo, misplaced comma, you’re so busted! They’re also the comma police?

Holy mother of goat and all her crazy nephews!

A recreation of the logo for the first America...

A recreation of the logo for the first American Survivor season, Survivor: Borneo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pardon?  Oh, housemate wants to know what planet have moi been living in the past 30 years. After all people have been complaining about this like forEVER, so he’s fairly sure that nothing will be done about this. Why? ‘Cuuz — during the last go-round, they reportedly made the performance appraisal more efficient and user-friendly (oh, hello ePerformance, you wonderful bureaucratic nightmare!). There’s no mention on making the process effective; just efficient. Something you gotta love!

The EER issue makes a routine appearance on the trade publication.  One September issue of the Foreign Service Journal had something on this. One of the letters (Through the Looking Glass, September 2009) was a comment on a previously published article on the journal (EERs: The Forgotten Front in the War for Talent). The letter writer whose name was withheld by request is a Foreign Service employee at an unnamed post in Africa. That in itself is quite telling:

This spring, I proofread many Employee Evaluation Reports and did not see a single negative statement — even in the one for my office’s former Office Management Specialist, whom I’ll call “Janet.” Janet was assigned to cover the phones in our busy office, but spent half the day in the hall chatting with friends. When she was at her desk, surfing the Web was one of her prime activities. She worked with us until the head of our office told the human resources director at post that he never wanted to see her again. HR moved Janet to another office, where she has continued to be unmotivated and uncaring.

Janet’s EER rater joked to me that he’d had to include her participation in a local 5K race as an achievement because it was so difficult to come up with anything good to say about her work. Apparently, being nice is much more important than being truthful.

After only one year with the Foreign Service, I’ve come to a depressing conclusion: because FS personnel aren’t actually evaluated, we are just like Soviet factory workers — lacking any incentive to excel.

Soviet factory workers, huh? A little outdated and a tad harsh, but we understand the sentiment.

A more recent Speaking Out piece, also in the Foreign Service Journal calculated the hours spent on EERs for each employee at 15 hours and the cumulative hours spent on EERs by the entire agency at 180,000 hours a year; the equivalent of 22,500 workdays, 61 calendar years or 90 working years.  You can read yourself scared silly about that on the FSJ September 20012 issue [See Overhauling the EER Process).

The FSO who wrote the article helpfully points out:

We need a system that significantly reduces the amount of time and energy it takes to produce a review, freeing up that time to pursue the important work of diplomacy and development. It should also accurately and fairly evaluate employees and, without overstating their accomplishments, produce EERs that enable promotion panels to identify high-performing employees.

Please do not think that there are no great workers out there. There are. And it is a disservice to them and all who spend far too much time making things work and doing things right (as oppose to just doing things) not to have an effective performance evaluation system. The heart of the problem is that supervisors with some exceptions lack the spine to do the right thing when it comes to performance evaluation. They’d rather let things slide than document a bad performance (let the next guy deal with dat) or conduct real counseling, cuz that can get complicated, and you might end up in the grievance board, or some elsewhere place you don’t really want to be. Or if they have the spine and they don’t play the game, their ratees suffer as a consequence since others then play the inflationary board game much better. See the problem there?

The performance review, if you look under the rug is an exercise in artful rhetoric.

Did you hear about that one where Front Office executives gave a Section Chief a glowing EER complete with fireworks, only to be contradicted with a firehose by an inspection evaluation review from the OIG?  The Front Office rater and reviewer talked about ratee as a big deal mentor and leader, and almost everyone else at post unfortunately, told the OIG inspectors the exact opposite. As you might imagine, the case ended up as part of the Grievance Board statistics.

On a related note, over at Foreign Policy (registration required), commenters on Nicholas Kralev’s recent piece  had some fun:

Geo Frick Frack:  ”… The successes are exaggerated, and the failures are obscured or explained away. Yet most have wonderful evaluations and the occasional award….”

SKB: Go ahead and give yourself a Franklin Award.  This round is on me.  ;)

Geo Frick Frack: Thanks. I’ll repay the favor with a Group MHA.

Anyway –  in keeping with belt tightening and the “Bank of Afghanistan R Us” spending bandwagon, let’s introduce one  money saver here — what if EERs become “Energy Expended Ratings” without the calorie counter in a pedometer?  Wouldn’t it be perfectly normal and acceptable to rate the energy expended in a 5K race, surfing the web, etc. ? Just think — no more excessive time wasted on drafting, revising, reviewing, beautifying, soliciting global input from  friends on the other side of the world on EER texts, or editing, finalizing, what have you, tinkering with these reports.

Imagine the “personhours” saved!  Sorry, we get an itch everytime we hear “manhours” so we try to avoid using that term.

Another possible money saver?  Just do away with convening the promotion boards.  Why not just let folks toss out colleagues and bosses in an “EER Survivor” reality show via BNET? Something like “outwit, outplay, outlast.”  A real 360 degree feedback without those wacky questions; and even wackier answers from BFFs and uber friendly colleagues and subordinates.

You think this would really be more difficult than the process that is now in place? Um, don’t know. We will executive produce it if you want to try it …

What about make-up artists?

What? Oh, no, no! The EER Survivor Reality Show has no line item for make-up artists.  All wrinkles will be up close and personal;  no airbrushing allowed for mediocre performance, either.  Of course, the reality show will also have a “classified” or at a minimum, “SBU” (sensitive but classified) viewers’ ratings so members of the media, bloggers in pajamas and nosy taxpayers will not be able to use it as a date-night excuse.  But the good news is — it’ll be available for viewing at the cafeteria!

How about it — these are great money savers and fantastic ideas, if we may say so ourselves?  Anyone?  ANYONE out there?

BTW, one of our former bosses wanted to become ambassador one day and declined the invitation.

But.. but… boss, you’ll be on tee-vee!!

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P.S. No EER was harmed in the writing of this blog post.

 

 

 

 

 

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January 15, 2013 · 12:34 pm

When should you recuse yourself from the State Dept Award Selection Committee?

re·cuse  /riˈkyo͞oz/
Excuse oneself from a case because of a possible conflict of interest or lack of impartiality.

We understand that the Foreign Affairs Manual does not provide for the recusal of any member of the Award Selection Committee for whatever reason. We don’t think that’s mentioned anywhere in the awards regulations.

But — just because it’s not in the books, that’s no reason why it cannot and should not be done — as they like to say inside the building — for the proper functioning of the service.

Reasonable people can agree that the perception that the award deliberation is slanted toward one nominee or another demoralizes as well as make people question the real value of any award.  Just as that long ago incident of an officer who nominated himself for an annual award and won.  Those can only generate derision and not/not admiration for both the award process and the recipient.

Remember R –?
Is he that one who nominated himself for the —-  award in —-?

Or:

Did you know that so and so won the —- award on —?
Really? Wait, didn’t — who sat in the Award Selection Committee directly supervised that officer in our post in —-?

Or this one:

Although I do not want to disparage the award recipient in anyway, I was horrified that the selection of — as the —  award recipient was made by a selection committee that included his very recent boss —-.

Hey! Awards are supposed to be happy news.  Inspiring even, if it passes the “fairness” test.  But it’s a small world and this still sounds bad whether the back and forth is done in the toilet stalls or down Foggy Bottom’s convoluted corridors.

So please – consider a few suggestions:

One, if you know any of the nominees -
Recuse yourself from the Selection Committee.

Two, if you’ve supervised or worked with any of the nominees-
Recuse yourself from the Selection Committee.

Three, if you’ve written or contributed to any of the EERs of any of the nominees -
Definitely, recuse yourself from the Selection Committee.

And to the bureau PDAS who allowed this show to roll on, walk the talk, man, walk the talk. The next generation you want to inspire is watching you closely.

 

 

 

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January 11, 2013 · 11:04 am

WhirledView: Benghazi and State: Where do the bucks stop?

WhirledView’s Patricia Kushlis (a 27-year veteran of the Foreign Service) asks, where the bucks stop on Benghazi?

Why, at the lower floors absolutely, where else?

But — we heard that people inside the building have been asking/discussing uncomfortable questions like — by what process did the State Department chose one NEA deputy assistant secretary (DAS) who may or may not have had Libya in his portfolio and three Diplomatic Security (DS) officials for discipline?  What were the criteria for such discipline?  Why were the NEA Assistant Secretary and Principal Assistant Secretary (PDAS) not in the mix? Who made the decision? Also on what basis did Administration/Department officials decide to extend the “temporary” Benghazi presence by another year?  On the basis of what criteria did Department leaders recently designate top-priority high risk, high threat posts?

All that we’ve talked about in our previous postings.

New Diplomatic Security Office to Monitor 17 High Threat Diplomatic Missions (With ARB Update)

State Dept’s New High Threat Posts Are Not All Danger Posts

Accountability Review Board Fallout: Who Will be Nudged to Leave, Resign, Retire? Go Draw a Straw

How long will the State Dept’s bureaucratic firewall hold at the bureau level?

Patricia’s post asking where those darn bucks should stop is good reading because so far those bucks have not stopped spinning.  She talks about leadership or lack thereof insider the big house, some of the characters in this badly done episode and a possible resolution in the next season.  Excerpt below:

The report corroborates that multiple mistakes were made – not just that tragic night – but in the months before. They go deep into the heart of the system’s weaknesses.  Leadership – or actually lack thereof – is a problem the report alludes to with capital Ls although names of officials above the Assistant Secretary, or bureaucratic Firewall, as Diplopundit put it, are missing. This might be adequate for a networked organization but the State Department is institutionalized hierarchy personified and the report tells us that news of the attack was being called in as it happened to State’s 24/7 Diplomatic Security Center and relayed to the NSC and elsewhere.  At least that piece of the building apparently works as it should.
[...]
Before Hillary Clinton set foot in the department, she knew that it suffered from severe financial and administrative stress.  She smartly established a Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources bringing in Jack Lew – Obama’s current Chief of Staff and now nominee to become the next Treasury Secretary – to fill the new position.  Lew lasted at State about a year, spent his time addressing budgetary deficiencies and much to his credit, got Congress to approve major funding increases for the beleagured department before he moved on and over to the White House.

Hillary didn’t, however, tackle other flashing yellow light administrative shortcomings – leaving management of the department and the embassies to Patrick F. Kennedy who had been brought back to State by mentor and then Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte in 2007. But before that Kennedy had been Chief of Staff at the US Transition Unit in Baghdad in 2004 where he worked for Negroponte and had held the same position in the CPA (2003) – a period of chaos in Iraq when millions upon millions of dollars disappeared.

Why Hillary kept Kennedy in the position after her arrival in 2009 is a mystery.  Anyone who was responsible for coordinating the reorganization of the foreign affairs agencies under Madeleine Albright – a real hash job whose Sandy-like after-effects reverberate today – or forbidding American Embassy officers from  attending Obama’s speech in Berlin July 24, 2008 on the grounds it was partisan politics despite the fact that Americans have the freedom to assemble under the US Constitution shrieks foremost, in my view, of a serious lack of judgment.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Then there’s that thorny not-so-little issue of State’s mismangement of diplomatic security  in Africa August 7, 1998 when Al Qaeda blew up the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing over 220 people including 12 Americans and injuring over 4,000.

For the record: Kennedy was Acting Under Secretary for Management from 1996-7 and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security in 1998 and  Eric Boswell’s first carnation as  Head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (he was in the same position when Benghazi ignited in September, was supposedly fired but is apparently still in place) was from 1996-98. So Boswell and Kennedy would have been in top management positions in State responsible for Embassy security when then US Ambassador Prudence Bushnell’s requests for better security for Nairobi had been refused.

[...]

It’s too late for Hillary to houseclean as she should have four years ago.  Calling her up to the Hill to confess guilt – or deflect blame – won’t make a difference in the next encounter between American diplomats and militant Islamic terrorists.  But John Kerry, her likely successor, should make tending State’s garden, investigating its Byzantine byways as well as focusing on its financial and human resources – a top priority.  Benghazi needn’t have happened.  There needn’t be a reprise.

Read in full here. 

If Senator Kerry is confirmed, we’d really like to see him stay home some more and and not try and break Condi or Hillary’s travel records. There are lots of stuff that really needs fixing right there inside The Building.

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January 10, 2013 · 2:25 am

2012 State Dept Annual Awards: Greatest Achievements in Many Fields, Mostly By Men

Where are the women?

In 2012, the State Department recognized 32 individuals in its Annual Awards Ceremony.  It granted a total of 32 awards, another two were not conferred due to apparently “insufficient number of nominations.”  We cannot be sure of this but it looks like one of the no award category is the “Ryan C. Crocker Award for Outstanding Leadership in Expeditionary Diplomacy” and  the “Thomas Morrison Information Management Award.” Not sure which is the second no award cat.

2012 was a tough year for expeditionary diplomats, and no one made the cut? How about that brave officer who cradled the head of …. in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks? No?

There were 8-9 female awardees (we cannot tell whether one person is male or female).  Two of the female awardees are for Office Management Specialist Award and the Civil Service Secretary of the Year, both under the  secretarial job series. The third one is for advancing women’s role in policy.

“Very gender stereotypic!” fumed our source.

The other 3 of the 8-9 female awardees are FSNs or locally employed staff.  Those awards (one for each regional bureau) exclude consideration of Foreign Service officers.

“Out of all the awards FSOs are eligible for, only 3 2 went to women: the advancing women’s role, linguist of the year, and Dunn award for excellence. Boo!”

3 FAM 4830 Annual Awards and more from Wikipedia here.

Reportedly, these awards serve to highlight the State Department’s “greatest achievements in many fields,” except that they mostly went to men, with the exception of the following:

Civil Service Secretary of the Year: Crystal Y. Johnson

This annual award recognizes the high standards of performance which characterize the work of Civil Service Secretaries in the Department and abroad.  It is granted annually to one Civil Service Secretary whose performance is judged by a selection committee to exemplify most clearly these high standards.  The recipient receives a certificate signed by the Secretary of State and $10,000.  In addition, the recipients’ names are placed on a plaque in the Department.

Office Management Specialist of the Year Award:  Gail M. Cooper

This annual award recognizes the high standards of performance which characterize the work of Foreign Service Office Management Specialists in the Department and abroad. It is granted annually to one Foreign Service OMS whose performance is judged by a selection committee to exemplify most clearly these high standards.  The recipient receives a certificate signed by the Secretary of State and $10,000.  In addition, the recipients’ names are placed on a plaque in the Department.

Swanee Hunt Award for Advancing Women’s Role in Policy Formulation: Heera K. Kamboj

These awards specifically recognize achievements in the area of promoting women as participants in the political and economic processes or as policy shapers.  An annual stipend of $10,000 will be given in two awards of $5,000 each:  one to a Foreign Service or Civil Service employee and one to a Foreign Service National at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate.

Foreign Service National of the Year Award (EAP): Chen Er

Foreign Service National of the Year Award (EUR): Zlatko Moratic

Foreign Service National of the Year Award (SCA): Farah Naz

James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence: G. Kathleen Hill

This award was established in 1980 to recognize exemplary performance in the Department of State at the mid-career level.  It is made possible by an endowment from the Vincent Astor Foundation and is named, at the request of the donor, in memory of Ambassador James Clement Dunn.  Ambassador Dunn retired from the Service in 1956 with the rank of Career Ambassador.  The recipient receives a certificate signed by the Secretary of State and $10,000.  The James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence recognizes leadership, intellectual skills, managerial ability, and personal qualities that most fully exemplify the standards of excellence desired of officers at the mid-career level.

Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy: Gloria F. Berbena

This award recognizes significant contributions in the field of public diplomacy and the special qualities that reflect the integrity, courage, sensitivity, vision, and dedication to excellence that were so highly exemplified in the life of Edward R. Murrow, the Director of the United States Information Agency from 1961 to 1964. The winner of the award receives a plaque presented during the commencement exercises at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. The winner also receives $10,000, which is presented at the annual Departmental Awards Ceremony held at the State Department.

Linguist of the Year Award: Adedeji E. Okediji

This award is presented to a member of the Foreign Service who demonstrates unusual mastery of a world or difficult language while studying at the Foreign Service Institute. The award consists of a certificate signed by the Secretary and $10,000. 

(note: deleted from this list as awardee is a he. will be included in the full list of awardees in a separate blogpost later)

So the news really is, if our math is correct, that 71.8% 75% of all awards in 2012 went to men, while women took just 28.1% 25 % of the total awards. To see how this matches up with the workforce composition at State, we went looking for employee demographics by gender.

According to careers.state.gov, the latest official report which the Department is required to file with the Office of Personnel Management provides the following statistics on DOS personnel for FY2011:

Total Workforce (CS and FS):
55.9% Male  44.1% Female

FS Generalists:
60.7% Male  39.3% Female

FS Specialists:
71.4% Male  28.5% Female

Civil Service:
43% male  57% female

So while the the total workforce at State is almost 56% male, the gender gap widens with male FS generalists (Pol, Con, Econ, PD, management officers) at over 60.7 % and male FS specialists (DS, IMO, HR, others) at 71.4%.  Only in the Civil Service are there more women than men in Foggy Bottom.

We’ve read somewhere that the FS specialist gender gap might be explained by the fact that majority of DS agents and IT specialists are male.  The 2012 awards number almost or is a close enough mirror of the FS specialist gap.  Why is that when in the the overall workforce, the gender gap isn’t as wide?  Note that we are not calling for gender as the driving force in these awards, we are not.  But why is there such a low representation of women FSOs in the 2012 awards? We are perplexed. Also, anyone knows the composition of the awards panels?

We’re sure somebody from DGHR has an excellent explanation. Except that DGHR now only responds to DiploPundit’s email of every stripe with an automated email saying, “If you have requested assistance, a response is forthcoming.” Forthcoming except when it’s not.

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January 8, 2013 · 12:24 am

QotW: Will Beth Jones Be Formally Nominated as Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs?

Laura Rozen of The Back Channel has the Buzz on Obama 2.0 Middle East team.  Excerpt below related to the ARB fallout:

Among the top questions is whether acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East Affairs Beth Jones will be formally nominated for the post under Secretary of State-nominee John Kerry , or whether someone new will be tapped.  Jones, a career foreign service officer, is, like Kerry, the child of US Foreign Service parents, who spent much of her childhood living abroad accompanying them on foreign assignments, including in Germany and Moscow.

Jones, who previously served as Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (2001-2005), came out of retirement in the private sector (APCO Worldwide) to assist in the Near East bureau in 2011. She assumed the Acting Assistant Secretary job for the bureau after Jeff Feltman retired to take the number three job at the United Nations last May.

Department sources said, however, that some State rank and file officers are troubled that the Benghazi investigation resulted in the departure of Jones’ deputy, Raymond Maxwell, who had come out of retirement to serve as deputy assistant secretary of state for Libya in 2011, department sources told the Back Channel. The perception among some in the ranks is that Jones let Maxwell take the fall, while escaping blame herself, in part because of her relationship with Tom Pickering, the veteran diplomat who chaired the Benghazi Accountability Review Board investigation, a department source who declined to speak for attribution said. Jones and Maxwell did not immediately return requests for comment.

Read in full here.

So that’s the question of the week.

We have previously blogged about the ARB fallout on personnel at State, both in the DS and NEA bureaus here and here.  We do not think that Ms. Jones will be formally nominated for a couple of reasons:

  1. While it is true that she has been on the job for about three months as acting Assistant Secretary at NEA when the September 11 attack occurred, she was the incumbent sitting at the top of the accountable regional bureau during the Benghazi Attacks. Formally nominating her for the job would look like a promotion despite the deadly fiasco inside the bureau in the lead up to the attacks.  That’s not good optics and the conspiracy sector will have a field day.  Frankly, we can’t even imagine what that confirmation would be like at the SFRC with Senators John McCain and Rand Paul plus newly minted senator from Arizona named Flake, joining in the fun, if she is nominated.
  2. If rank and file officers were troubled with the departure of NEA DAS Raymond Maxwell in the aftermath of the ARB report, imagine what the morale would be like if she formally assumes the job. With a new secretary of state, not sure, this is something he would really want to deal with at the start of his tenure. The incoming SecState has an opportunity to start with a new slate, we think that’s what he’ll do — not because of inside knowledge (we have none) but because that makes the most sense.

Besides — what’s this proclivity with calling people back from retirement?  How about these folks?  None of them qualified to run the bureau with lots of countries in the hotzones?  Where’s the next generation of State Department leaders coming up the ladder? Zap us an email if you know their undisclosed locations.

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December 21, 2012 · 10:00 am

How long will the State Dept’s bureaucratic firewall hold at the bureau level?

4 State Department Resignations Follow Benghazi Report - a headline repeated with some variation since Wednesday.

The bureaucratic casualties as of December 20:  One assistant secretary, and reportedly two of his deputies, and a fourth one who was third level down from his bureau’s assistant secretary.

Only one, the assistant secretary submitted his resignation. The other three apparently were put on  “administrative leave” pending further action. Hey! What does “further action” means?  Does that mean reassignment?  Retirement? Or just go disappear until the press gets tired of this thing?  Does that mean the higher ups who dodged the bullet are still looking up what FAM cite to slap them with? Why? Oh, because the Foreign Affairs Manual is the official rules book. Anything not on it, is not considered to have real teeth.  So, obviously, if you want to line them up on a career firing squad, you better get the FAM citation right. Or Legal would have a fit. And that’ll be a ton of paperwork and what with the holidays next week …

Who the foxtrot wants to be stuck at the office doing that sort of stuff!?

Anyway, one was reportedly preparing to retire, anyway.

Too bad his office was not on the 7th floor.

In any case, if he’s been in with XX years of service, he will get a Certificate of Appreciation personally signed by the Secretary of State. Woohoo!

One presumably did not know what was coming; blithely posting on social media about the NYT story on the ARB report the night it was released.

No one called to say we’re releasing this report tonight and there’s no breach or whatever, but that you might stay home tomorrow because the buzzards will be circling the Truman building?

Nothing like that?

According to Dead Men Working, “one will be sorely missed by DS, which would have benefited greatly from his continued service.”

Career execution is a fairly common practice in public organizations, but since they’re often done in private with few details, there is always talk about inability to discuss such personnel matters.  And since there are few breadcrumbs and even fewer witnesses, no can can definitely say who fired the coup de grâce. (thanks N., you may eat another xmas cookie).

We find the “fixin” the blame ‘er accountability at the bureau level quite disturbing but also laughable.  We are tempted to start calling this the “Accountability for Mid Level Officials Review Board” as suggested below.

More of that from the National Review, below an excerpt from Elliot Abrams:

Does the new report on the State Department’s failures in Benghazi really deliver “accountability?” No: In fact it actually sacrifices a few career officials and protects the higher-ups.

While the report has been called scathing and tough, it does not fix any real responsibility on top officials: the secretary of state, the two deputy secretaries of state, or the assistant secretary for the Near East. The Diplomatic Security bureau takes a lot of hits, but I don’t see in it any serious discussion of the roles played by the under secretary for management, who supervises that bureau, nor of the “Seventh Floor” — the very top officials of the department.
[...]
It is even odder that Secretary Clinton, who once said “I take responsibility. . . . I take this very personally,” also gets off without criticism. It’s not that absolving her or her top deputies is necessarily wrong, but where it leads is bound to affect morale in the department. Look at these events from the perspective of career officials at the office director or deputy assistant secretary level, and what just happened? People like you were just ruined, while people up the chain got off scot free. Being on the Seventh Floor appears to grant immunity. I’m sure that’s what is being said around the water coolers at State, and from what I can see they are not wrong. Pickering led what was called an “Accountability Review Board.” A better name might have been “Accountability for Mid Level Officials Review Board.”

As we’ve noted here, the NEA bureau has been headed by Elizabeth Jones in an acting capacity since June 2012. Don’t know her, never meet her. State always expect that its officers hit the ground running whether in Foggy Bottom or in Burkina Faso.  If we cut her some slack, that’s from our belief, rightly or wrongly, that one needs at least 3-6 months to do an effective transition. We wrote previously that “If she is nudged out when she was on the job barely three months when Benghazi happened, we might think that the pressured shakeup is for purposes of appearances.”

We’ll, it now looks like she’ll be spared but State has now reached down to the third level down at the NEA bureau to find someone “accountable.” And this has nothing to do with appearances and managing perception.

Also the Cable cites the Q&A during the hearing between D/S Bill Burns and Senator Rubio:

When pressed by Rubio over whether the March and July cable requesting more security had reached the upper echelons of the State Department, Burns said they had.

“Well, they certainly would have been reviewed up through assistant secretary level, and it may be that some of my colleagues on the 7th floor saw them as well.” Burns said. “There were certainly memos that came up to the 7th floor that talked about the deteriorating security situation in eastern Libya, yes, sir.”
[...]
Maxwell, according to several State Department sources, had been slated to retire in September but was asked to stay on as DAS for the Maghreb after the attack. Maxwell might have been in a position to directly receive the requests for more security in Benghazi, giving him a direct connection to the security failures, those sources speculated. Those details are confined to the classified version of the ARB report. But State Department officials insist that he would not have been able make any decisions about such matters with consulting with Jones, who would have had the final say.

“Either they have some kind of documentary evidence that puts Maxwell in a bad light specifically, or this could be the Foreign Service elite protecting itself. Maxwell is not a member of the elite, but Jones is,” one senior foreign policy hand who has worked in the State Department said.

So the three future scenarios we’re looking at next:

  1. That the four resignations will temper the noise and hold the firewall at the bureau level.
  2. That the four resignations will increase the noise, add more questions, breach the bureau firewall and one or more of the Under Secretaries will roll.
  3. That with the holiday week coming, people will be riveted by last minute shopping, and will be so Benghazid-out to care.

The next time you guys (those still in the building) attend your mandatory leadership and management training, ask your facilitators how to survive organizational life when your leadership is in crisis. When lower-ranked officials are pressured to take the blame while higher ups in the food chain skate, we don’t call it true leadership.

Also, note that we’re not suggesting that all these bureau officials forced to leave made no errors in judgment.  We don’t know.  But to expect us to believe that these folks alone in a highly structured organization committed a firing offense and that their upper bosses knew nothing about whatever it was they did  … why, that’s a bunch of somethings, dahrlings!

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September 13, 2012 · 1:51 am

US Embassy Egypt: PAO Larry Schwartz Thrown Under the Bus Over “Inappropriate Apology”

There was that clip of a badly made obscure movie posted in YouTube which roiled the mob in Cairo on September 11. (AP on Sept. 12, said its search for those behind the film led to a Coptic Christian in California who had been convicted of financial crimes). The US Embassy in Egypt released the following statement:

U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement
September 11, 2012

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney waded in with a statement here, calling “disgraceful” an early response to the assault in Cairo and saying it sympathized with the attackers.  The embassy statement, an apparent reference to the video clip in YouTube, was posted hours before the official death in Libya was reported.

Politifact consulted three apology experts who all agreed that the statement from the US Embassy in Cairo was not an apology because one expert says, 1) it did not use the word “apology” or said “we’re sorry”; 2) the statement condemns the actions of a third party and 3) it does not apologize for the right of free speech. Another expert says “To say that someone who deliberately insults others in the name of religion has acted wrongly isn’t an apology — it’s simply a recognition that those insults go too far.” Still another of Politifact’s experts says “it is a condemnation of ‘abuse’ of the universal value of free speech. A condemnation is not an apology. … The Embassy statement also reaffirms two American values: the American value of respect for religious beliefs and the American value of democracy.”

No matter, that condemnation statement from the US Embassy Cairo has now entered the twilight zone of presidential politics and The Cable’s Josh Rogin has the scoop inside this public relations disaster at our Cairo embassy. Two responsible officials were named in the article — the Deputy Chief of Mission Marc Sievers, who was the acting charge d’affairs and the embassy’s senior public affairs officer Larry Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz was previously Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and a seasoned public diplomacy officer. He, presently, just got thrown under the bus over the apology controversy. And run over twice once more for good measure.

Here is an excerpt:

“In an effort to cool the situation down, it didn’t come from me, it didn’t come from Secretary Clinton. It came from people on the ground who are potentially in danger,” Obama said. “And my tendency is to cut folks a little bit of slack when they’re in that circumstance, rather than try to question their judgment from the comfort of a campaign office.”

But Obama’s remarks belie the enormous frustration of top officials at the State Department and White House with the actions of the man behind the statement, Cairo senior public affairs officer Larry Schwartz, who wrote the release and oversees the embassy’s Twitter feed, according to a detailed account of the Tuesday’s events.
[....]
Before issuing the press release, Schwartz cleared it with just one person senior to himself, Deputy Chief of Mission Marc Sievers, who was the acting charge d’affairs at the embassy on Tuesday because Ambassador Anne Patterson was in Washington at the time, the official said.

Schwartz sent the statement to the State Department in Washington before publishing and the State Department directed him not to post it without changes, but Schwartz posted it anyway.

“The statement was not cleared with anyone in Washington. It was sent as ‘This is what we are putting out,’” the official said. “We replied and said this was not a good statement and that it needed major revisions. The next email we received from Embassy Cairo was ‘We just put this out.’”
[...]
“People at the highest levels both at the State Department and at the White House were not happy with the way the statement went down. There was a lot of anger both about the process and the content,” the official said. “Frankly, people here did not understand it. The statement was just tone deaf. It didn’t provide adequate balance. We thought the references to the 9/11 attacks were inappropriate, and we strongly advised against the kind of language that talked about ‘continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.’”

Despite being aware of Washington’s objections, the embassy continued to defend the statement for several hours, fueling the controversy over it, a decision the official again attributed to Schwartz.

Perhaps it is telling that The Cable’s source are “one U.S. official close to the issue” and “two additional administration officials”, all unnamed.  If this went down as detailed in the report, shouldn’t we at least know who’s pointing fingers?  Considering that one congressman, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) is already calling for the State Department to “issue an immediate apology to the American people and fire those officials responsible for the initial statement” — that seems only fair.

Who would have thought that Twitter is such a dangerous sinkhole.

Anyway here’s the thing — Foreign Service officers are really, really excellent at following the chalked lines. You don’t see a lot of rogue and old diplomats for very good reasons. And they, certainly, do not suddenly forget their clearance procedures because they were confronted with a badly made, badly written and badly acted movie clip in YouTube; much less, defy a direct order from the State Department when it comes to an official statement for public consumption. Unless, of course, the officer is looking to commit a career suicide. And I’m not convinced that is the case with man of the hour, Larry Schwartz.

It would be nice to know who in the State Department “directed” Mr. Schwartz not/not to post the statement without changes, wouldn’t it? Was it somebody in the Bureau of Public Affairs? Was it somebody in the regional bureau? Did anyone also tell him that if this sh*t blows up we’ll make sure Foreign Policy knows how to spell your name?

This is what you’d call the bureaucratic duck and cover. It looks like the poor sod under the bus did not get a lot warning.  If he did get some warning, we’d be interested to know if he got a special phone call telling him to take one for the team before they throw him to the sharks on a feeding frenzy.

Update: WaPo’s The Fact Checker has a long item on this here in An embassy statement, a tweet, and a major misunderstanding.

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September 10, 2012 · 12:30 am

The Foreign Service is like your husband’s crazy college girlfriend … Va Va Voom — oh, but …

One of our favorite Foreign Service writers, Kelly of Well, That Was Different has her blog fingers right on the button on this.   When the Foreign Affairs Fudge Factory (by John Franklin Campbell) or The Theory of Public Bureaucracy (Politics, Personality, and Organization in the State Department)  (by Donald Warwick) ever gets updated for the 21st century, there definitely needs to be a section for the crazy old girlfriend’s schizophrenic outbursts and not too endearing qualities. Kelly writes:

The Foreign Service is like your husband’s (‘scuse the masculine, but that’s how it is for us) crazy college girlfriend. She is sexy as hell, which is how she seduced your husband in his young and foolish student days. But, she is also bipolar and totally narcissistic.

She can be really nice when she wants to be, or more accurately, when it’s in her interest to do so. Every couple of years, she comes knocking at the door, all charming and cute, with slick promises of promotion, money, and other goodies, and chances are, your husband will be suckered once again.

She even has long periods of sanity sometimes—at least I think I remember one of those. (It lasted about 8 years.)

The manic phases are interesting. Sometimes, she even gets a wild hair and builds a huge mansion in, like, the worst neighborhood on the planet, then expects everyone to be totally excited to work and live there.

But look out when she is on a downswing. You are just cannon fodder then, and she’ll be seriously pissed if you don’t toe the line. She gets especially cranky when she’s running out of money, or someone is giving her a hard time. She doesn’t take criticism very well. In fact, her general approach is to deny that there is a problem. Being basically insane, she may actually believe this to be true.

 

Tee-he! Can’t help but appreciate the sustained simile.  Continue reading In Which I Am Shocked To Discover That I No Longer Absolutely Loathe Foreign Service Bidding.

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