What would be the role of a policy and research officer in a foreign service position?

Question

If one were to create a job description for such a position, what would it entail? Let's say, if it applies to a United Nations member country?

Answer 1

The role is essentially to support an organization's mission by developing, monitoring, modifying and promoting relevant policies through expert knowledge and research.

Here are two prime examples:
http://www.africa-union.org/vacancies/other%20vacancies/August%209%202005/P2_Policy_Officer_Research.htm

http://www.iansa.org/about/jobs/policy_officer.htm

Answer 2

What country is not a United Nations member country?

In embassies, "policy and research" means either political officer (or perhaps economic officer) or another substantive function (military attaché, espionage officer).

In real life, most policy study and research is done by reading the newspapers; but of course getting out and meeting people helps too. CNN has vastly changed the work of embassies because it has given a constant flow of data to headquarters back home.

Few such foreign service officers have specific training in law and political science, and much of their output is naïve. I'm not sure how you can write a job description that will hold them to a higher standard than they are trained for or capable of. The biggest issue is linguistic skill: if an officer is not comfortable in the vernacular s/he can not function properly; yet it's impossible to justify training at that level in hard, minor languages (or, for that matter, Finnish or Hungarian). The result is that only a few gifted language learners can succeed in such countries by my definition.

Journalists (like diplomats) often have no choice but to use interpreters. That's a shame: but the skills needed for diplomacy and journalism don't necessarily come in tandem with language skills. For business this is far less important, although some languages are in such supply from expatriates and their offspring (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Russian) that it shouldn't be a problem for major "sending" countries. The risks (problems) there are moral and cultural affinities.

Answer 3

Many countries now recruit locals to do much of the policy and research work. It is a lot cheaper than posting a diplomat, and besides locals have (stating the obvious here) local knowledge, contacts and language skills.

A research officer would read newspapers, magazines, forum procedings and other literature, scrutinising for information useful to the Embassy. Their role is to provide as much relevant information as possible, which is then used to formulate policy.

If you are interested in a job, I would recommend you swot up on all the economic, political and other boring details of your host country. Excellent writing skills is another must.