Overview

(a) Determining priorities 28-determining-priorities)

(b) Researching and understanding the policy guidance 29-researching-and-understanding-the-policy-guidance)

(c) Articulating the potential PD contribution 30-articulating-the-potential-pd-contribution)

(a) Identify potential audience groups 31-identify-potential-audience-groups)

(b) Visualize the current environment 31-visualize-the-current-environment)

(a) Visualize the future environment 33-visualize-the-future-environment)

(b) Identifying priority audiences 34-identifying-priority-audiences)

(a) Selecting and describing priority audiences 38-selecting-and-describing-priority-audiences)

(b) Brainstorming initiatives 38-brainstorming-initiatives)

(c) Matching the initiative to your audience 39-matching-the-initiative-to-your-audience)

(d) Assessing and selecting initiatives 40-assessing-and-selecting-initiatives)

Publication Information

PUBLISHED
December 20, 2024

PROPONENT
Organizational Learning Unit, Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for Public Diplomacy
(R/PPR)

ABOUT R/PPR
The Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for Public Diplomacy (R/PPR) provides long-term strategic planning and performance measurement capability for
public diplomacy. It also enables the Under Secretary to better
advise on the allocation of public diplomacy and public affairs resources, to focus those
resources on the most urgent national security objectives, and provide realistic
measurement of public diplomacy's and public affairs' effectiveness.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING UNIT
R/PPR’S Organizational Learning Unit (OLU) supports the Department’s public diplomacy
community in developing a culture of learning. The team publishes and maintains
materials related to the theory and practice of public diplomacy; collects, synthesizes, and
distributes best practices and lessons learned; and supports skills development and
capacity growth for public diplomacy professionals to operationalize the Public Diplomacy
Framework.

DRAFTER Jacqueline Whitt

MANAGING EDITOR Kristy Smith

Front matter

A. Scope and intent

1. Scope

PD Foundations is the cornerstone project developing foundational principles that guide the practice of public diplomacy (PD) at the Department of State. This volume is not intended to be an exhaustive accounting of PD work or processes, but rather an introduction to ideas and concepts that will ground the practice of public diplomacy in a common language. PD Foundations is a starting point to successfully planning, implementing, and assessing public diplomacy interventions.

2. Purpose

The Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy (R) directed the preparation of PD Foundations by the Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for Public Diplomacy (R/PPR) with input from practitioners and other experts. As such, it provides direction for the interpretation of policy and the design and implementation of PD activities by PD offices and sections, PD practitioners, and others implementing PD functions for the Department.

The PD Foundations project is composed of multiple parts. The “Public Diplomacy in Practice” series lays out shared vocabulary and practices for the modern tradecraft of public diplomacy, including at overseas posts and other contexts. The “Contemporary Public Diplomacy” series explores our shared identity, examining the current state of the field through various lenses, historical, theoretical, logical, metaphorical, functions over time, and PD’s role in the U.S. government. And the “Public Diplomacy Theories and Concepts” series contains deeper explorations of the application of core aspects of public diplomacy. This volume is part of the ”PD in Practice” Series.

3. Application

Guidance established in this volume applies to all PD practitioners serving in assignments abroad and to any headquarters or domestic elements that support, coordinate, or collaborate with PD practitioners overseas.

Public diplomacy practitioners should follow the guidance provided in this publication except in rare instances when PD section chiefs and office directors judge that exceptional circumstances dictate otherwise. The U.S. Constitution, Congressional legislation, the Foreign Affairs Manual and Foreign Affairs Handbook (FAM/FAH), and specific guidance from the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (R) take precedence over this document.

B. Executive summary

This volume of PD Foundations, “Public Diplomacy in Practice,” provides a primer on the foundational concepts that practitioners need to implement and improve PD practices in missions in their day-to-day planning and work. The primary audience for this volume is PD practitioners in the field. The objective of this work is to provide baseline definitions to support common understanding of the work of PD and specific actionable tools that practitioners can use in their day-to-day work. Other groups of users, including practitioners who are working in domestic PD offices, regional PD offices, and front offices that work with PD sections and teams, will also find this volume useful.

Section I. Introduction and the Public Diplomacy Framework, introduces the concept of policy-centered, audience-focused, data-informed public diplomacy and discusses constraints and challenges. It also introduces the Public Diplomacy Framework, including the five core elements: 1) Apply Policy in Context; 2) Analyze Audience; 3) Develop Plans; 4) Manage Effectively; and 5) Learn and Adapt.

Section II. Strategic planning: A design approach for public diplomacy, defines what design thinking (or a design approach) means in this context and outlines a model for PD strategic planning based on this concept. The design approach outlines a five-step process for thinking through high-level planning to move from strategic guidance to the development of PD initiatives: 1) identify policy guidance, 2) assess the current environment, 3) visualize the desired future environment, 4) articulate a problem statement, and 5) develop the PD approach. The chapter encourages PD practitioners to apply a design approach to PD problems and to use a design mindset to develop PD solutions. Practitioners should start with analyzing and framing relevant policy guidance, including researching the objective; articulating the PD angle of an issue or topic; and prioritizing it within the larger strategic vision. Step two asks the team to conduct a research-based analysis of the current environment. Step three applies this research to envisioning a future state where the contemplated policy goal is achieved. This step helps practitioners begin to envision the potential initiatives needed to move toward the envisioned policy outcome. Step four focuses on defining the gap between the current and desired states to articulate a specific and actionable problem statement. This problem statement orients practitioners toward solving a problem and identifying a priority audience through developing an approach in step five. The design approach encourages practitioners to use an iterative approach to planning in which they constantly incorporate new and evolving data into their work.

Section III. Detailed planning: Using a logic model, walks practitioners through the specifics of initiative and activity planning using a logic model. A logic model is a foundational planning and performance monitoring tool that highlights the inputs, actions, outputs, and outcomes and their associated indicators used to articulate the relationship between a PD initiative or activity and the objectives it furthers. The knowledge gained by constructing a logic model allows practitioners to build strong hypotheses, leading to stronger connections, initiative planning, and assessment. The chapter challenges practitioners to ask some key questions, which will strengthen the initiative in the long term by pushing toward clearer, measurable goals.

In order to complete a logic model, practitioners must first identify and articulate an objective for the initiative or activity you are planning. Next, identify assumptions underlying your plans, thereby acknowledging that all plans are made with incomplete information and can be reassessed over time. The logic model then includes identifying inputs, audience, and activities/actions. In each section, you should strive toward specificity, revisiting the sections of the logic model when you have new information or make key decisions. Ultimately, actions and activities must be explicitly tied to measurable outputs and outcomes. These categories ask practitioners to evaluate success on a fundamental level: how will you know whether the efforts are achieving the desired results? Of these categories, outcomes are most important and can be measured in both the short term and the long term. Outputs are things that are produced and counted, whereas outcomes are evidence of changed attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors in an audience. The knowledge gained by following through the logic model enables practitioners to build strong hypotheses, which leads to stronger connections, initiative planning, and monitoring or evaluation.

Section IV. Implementing and Managing, turns to the day-to-day skills involved in implementing the ”Manage Effectively” element of the Public Diplomacy Framework. This section includes introductory sections on team management, project management, financial management, and knowledge management.

This chapter highlights the strengths of leveraging multicultural teams, which results in stronger performance than that of homogenous teams and encourages PD practitioners to include a wide variety of perspectives and data sources in their research and planning. It offers guidance on how to put together cross-functional teams, including Locally Employed (LE) staff and staff from outside the PD section, to give depth of perspective when developing initiatives.

The chapter also provides a high-level overview of project management tools and introduces the key concepts of knowledge management, thereby highlighting the practices essential for recording, sharing, and preserving successes for future reference.

Finally, the chapter continues with an overview of the federal budget process, highlighting the budget cycle and how best to include budgeting considerations and funding sources in the planning process while reminding staff that .7 funds are not the only source of funding for programming. Posts often manage significant programs that are funded with Educational and Cultural Exchanges (ECE) and region-specific funds.

Section V. Assessing, learning, and adapting, highlights the fifth element of the Public Diplomacy Framework. As practitioners develop and implement initiatives, they learn more about the issue, their audiences, their plans, and implementation approaches. PD practitioners incorporate all this information into future plans. Monitoring is a key part of this process. Monitoring includes ongoing investigating and reporting on what happened during the program, measured against the logic model developed in the planning stage. Evaluations, then, are focused on measuring results against the goals and on trying to explain and learn from those findings. Evaluations are suggested for large, novel, or critical initiatives, and the process may take many forms. The chapter highlights the main principles to consider when deciding whether to perform an evaluation. Evaluations should be useful; be methodologically rigorous; and use ethical independent evaluators who are mindful of the cultural considerations of working with stakeholders, beneficiaries, and other informants.

Section VI. Appendices, provides more detail, recommendations, and tools for implementing certain workflows and processes that are introduced in the main text of the document.

• Appendix A: Prioritization tools offers four ways to think about prioritizing goals, projects, and tasks that can be used by individuals and teams to think about how to organize their work.
• Appendix B: Problem statement templates builds on the design approach described above, giving readers concrete advice on drafting problem statements, including by using fill-in-the-blank templates.
• Appendix C: Troubleshooting problematic problem statements outlines common pitfalls in problem statements and how to solve them.
• Appendix D: Identifying, selecting, and describing audiences contains examples of the audience analysis piece of the design approach, illustrating the connections between the policy objective, the problem statement, the initiative, and the audiences for that initiative.
• Appendix E: Planning tools outlines a couple of options for planning projects and initiatives: SMART criteria and the A–F Framework. These project planning tools help practitioners think carefully about project structure and purposes.
• Appendix F: Initiative hypothesis templates and examples gives easy-to-use examples and templates for drafting an initiative hypothesis statement, which makes the relationship between the activity and the larger U.S. foreign policy goal explicit. It also provides guidance for overcoming common challenges while writing hypotheses.
• Appendix G: Planning assumptions further applies the first step of the logic model by exploring the practice of identifying and recording the assumptions that go into planning an initiative, with a list of examples.
• Appendix H: PD officer transition plan provides planning guidance and checklists for both departing PD Officers and newly arrived PD Officers.
• Appendix I: Debrief templates provides a few ways of capturing experiences related to PD program design and implementation.