Foreign Office permanent secretary Simon Fraser responds to a CSW Opinion column by former diplomat Carne Ross.

 There’s something happening in the Foreign Office (FCO). But I’m glad to say that it isn’t the decline which Carne Ross, one of our able alumni, lamented in his article in May.

What’s happening is a coordinated and determined effort across the FCO to be a really first class diplomatic service, working for the national interest. This drives everything we do in policy, diplomacy, public service, corporate support, leadership and management.

We’re calling this campaign ‘Diplomatic Excellence’. What does that mean? Above all, being excellent at policy; focused on regional and language expertise, and the diplomatic skills of negotiation, analysis and drafting. We use a customer group, of people inside and outside the FCO, which gives regular, frank feedback on our policy performance. We are involving our own highly respected in-house experts, the FCO research analysts, more closely in policymaking processes. We have scaled up training in priority languages, and started lunchtime classes in Mandarin, French and Arabic. We have introduced a new International Policy Skills programme and have ring-fenced funding to support the development of greater regional expertise.

We are also developing our economic and commercial diplomacy. We have strengthened our economists’ team. Working with UK Trade & Industry and the business department, we are developing training in how to spot and seize commercial opportunities; we know we need to sharpen these skills to deliver our ambitious prosperity objectives.

We’re also reaching out more. We’re harnessing the expertise and experience of ex-FCO staff and retired ambassadors. We are taking a more open approach to how we engage with those who have an interest and influence in foreign affairs, whether faith groups, academics, NGOs or diaspora groups, through structures like the foreign secretary’s Human Rights Advisory Group. We’ve started hosting eyewitness events on the dramatic recent developments in Libya, for example, bringing over people who have been on the ground in Tripoli and Misrata to talk to ministers and policymakers as well as NGOs and press. And we’re using the new tools of diplomacy to reach new audiences. Nick Kay, our ambassador in Khartoum (the Americans don’t have one) writes a blog which is widely read by policymakers and opinion-formers throughout Sudan, and @sudanunit has nearly 700 followers on Twitter.

We’re also shifting our resources to where it counts, to the emerging political and economic powers of the future, who will be increasingly important to the UK. That is why the foreign secretary announced last month a strategic shift in our resource abroad to India and China, to a series of large emerging powers such as Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and the Gulf. We are opening five new embassies, and closing none.

This is about strategic ambition. And we have matched this shift abroad by moving more resources at home to policy directorates in the FCO. Our agenda in Diplomatic Excellence is to strengthen our policy capability whilst preserving the huge improvement we have made in public service delivery in the last years.

In the last few months, FCO staff helped many thousands of British nationals and people from dozens of other countries who have found themselves in difficulty as a result of natural disasters or civil unrest. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya we helped over 6,000 British nationals leave. More than 150 trained crisis experts have been deployed, alongside many more staff from regional posts, to support our crisis responses. We provided consular advice to over 150,000 people about the Japanese tsunami and Fukushima.

Diplomatic Excellence also means strong management and leadership. We need all our staff – UK and overseas – to share this vision of excellence, and we will give them the tools to achieve it. That includes more rigorous performance management where it is necessary, whether to make the most of talent or to address under-performance. We will be using local staff for a wider range of work where it is sensible to do so, focusing UK-based staff where they can add the most value. Our workforce will get smaller and better focused, with the right skills being used in the right places to achieve the best possible results. Carne Ross used to work in our Mission in New York at the UN. In recent months our diplomats there have achieved big successes on Libya and Afghanistan. So Carne should both cheer up – and check his facts. 

Simon Fraser is permanent secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Click here to read Carne Ross's article