Incentivize Highly Skilled FSOs to Return to Foggy Bottom

By: Dan Spokojny | July 24, 2023

Note: I would like to thank the handful of current and former Foreign Service Offers who offered perspectives and advice for this article.

The State Department recently announced updated rules for the reentry of recently departed Foreign Service Officers. Here is the official announcement from the Department, and here is a good article on the subject from a former FSO.

When I took leave without pay from the Foreign Service in early 2016, I met at least a dozen former FSOs in the vicinity of Silicon Valley thriving in tech, earning advanced degrees, leading organizations, and doing amazing things. Each of them continues to say “we” when referring to the Foreign Service; it remains an identity and a badge of honor for those who have served.

Yet many are greeted coldly when they explore returning to service at the State Department. 

I’ve polled a few of my recently-departed Foreign Service colleagues to better understand their views. Many would jump at the chance to return to the Department if empowered to apply their new leadership, technical, and substantive skills earned since their departures from Foggy Bottom. However, the path being offered to them is littered with disincentivizing challenges:

• Returning to one’s former rank following years of upskilling feels like being demoted;

• Directed assignments into an obscure, hard-to-fill assignment would feel like a punishment rather than an opportunity to apply one’s new experience, suggesting the Department only values returnees as warm bodies;

• The Foreign Service remains distrustful of skills gained outside of the Department;

• Nothing gained during time away from the Department can be included in one’s EER;

• And, it may go without saying that government pay is significantly less competitive than the private sector.

Those most successful on the outside may therefore be the least likely to reapply. Such folks believe that political appointments are the only viable pathway for reentry, which serves to erode the model of a professional diplomatic corps.

The reentry program is not a critical priority for the Department. Still, its challenges mirror more significant issues facing a Department struggling to modernize and retain its rightful role as the lead foreign policy agency. The skills most challenging for the Department to fill are the same skills most likely to be gained on the outside. Greasing the skids for talented officers to return to Foggy Bottom would energize Secretary Blinken’s modernization agenda and set diplomacy on a better path into the future.

I want to offer a few ideas for capitalizing on the expertise and experience of recently departed FSOs:

• Model a “critical skills” program after the “critical language” program to incentivize the return and placement of certain high-skilled alumni;

• Set a pathway for those with critical skills to serve in positions that capitalize on their new skill sets;

• Pilot a program to consider rank increases for alums who have demonstrated significant external leadership and success;

• Reward FSOs for external training in their promotion processes;

• Maintain contact with departed mid-level officers and consider them potential partners.