October 5, 2016 | No Comments
President Barack Obama is directing America’s national security agencies to promote more diversity in their ranks, arguing that inclusiveness is an “imperative” in a still-dangerous but increasingly interconnected world.
Obama lays out his instructions in a Presidential Memorandum released Wednesday.
The memo, whose details were shared first with POLITICO, directs government departments and agencies to take several steps aimed at cultivating a more diverse workforce. They include: improving the collection and publication of data related to workforce diversity; providing employees more access to professional development opportunities; and expanding the training offered on “implicit or unconscious bias, inclusion, and flexible work policies.”
National Security Adviser Susan Rice, in a recent speech, stressed that a more diverse workforce, in agencies ranging from the FBI to the State Department, is crucial for continued U.S. strength on the global stage, arguing it can help Americans avoid the perils of “groupthink.”
In a blog post due to be published alongside the president’s memorandum, Rice says the U.S. national security workforce “has not yet fully drawn” on the strength America’s own diverse make-up offers. She notes “minorities make up less than 20 percent of our senior diplomats and 15 percent of senior military officers and senior intelligence officials,” even though “nearly 40 percent of the approximately 320 million people in the United States are minorities.”
“The leadership of men and women who may not share similar backgrounds lends much needed diversity of thought and creativity to our responses to some of the world’s toughest problems,” Rice is expected to say in the post.
According to a fact sheet issued alongside the memo, some 3 million civilians and military personnel in the U.S. government work in the national security arena, including the intelligence agencies. But, compared to the wider federal government, the national security workforce is less diverse.
The fact sheet and memo suggest that the Obama administration is defining diversity very broadly, whether it be people with special language skills or people with various racial, religious or sexual identities. There are no calls for quotas for any groups.
“Promoting diversity and inclusion ensures that national security departments and agencies can recruit their employees from the broadest possible pool of talent and bring a wide range of perspectives, skills, and backgrounds to bear to tackle our toughest problems,” the fact sheet states.
The memorandum builds on past efforts by Obama to promote diversity in the broader federal workforce, including an executive order issued in 2011. Since then, a number of steps have been taken to fulfill the president’s goal, including the Defense Department’s decision to open all military occupations to women and transgender people.