office and the person willing to share the job with you. we have two day care facilities. we're about to have a third, one at fsi, one at sa-1, and one at a new building that is being revamped and readied for ca. we need more capacity. everybody knows that. and we're exploring everything we can do. i also have been made aware of the desire for more lactation rooms. i think we have added numbers to that, and we are in the process of trying to develop a policy to increase the numbers. and i think there is a lot that practical and again maybe apparently small steps, but which could make a big difference in an individual's ability to balance family and work. so i hope that we'll keep, really, stretching the envelope on this. obviously on, you know, for our lgbt community, we have really broken through and done a lot in terms of improving family-related policies. so we're very sensitive to this. we'll try to do as much as we can within the confines of the kind of, you know, specific constraints that we have to work with. so keep the ideas coming, and keep encouraging talented women to move up the ranks. we don't want there to be any

stagnation in numbers. there should be no glass ceiling or any other kind of court of appealing that prevents women from going forward in so far as we can make the work environment successful for you. so we'll keep working on that. [ applause ] >> good morning, madam secretary. my name is doris mcbride. i'm in the bureau of economic and business affairs. as you know, even though there are some agencies that are growing, we are not the only agency that is facing difficulty in terms of resources. you mentioned earlier, for example, the department of energy as well, but you didn't mention the department of commerce are among the agencies that we work with closely that are having resource issues. and i'm wondering what your thoughts are about that and how that affects their ability to engage in diplomacy with us overseas. >> that is a really good question because, you know we have worked hard to make the case for state and aid

resources. and i'm knocking on wood. but we've done better than many would have ever expected because we've been really focused on making the congress understand that all the things that they want done, like increase the numbers of people processing visas in china and brazil and shorten the time takes money and takes people. but it's harder for us to make the interagency argument about our colleagues. we do work closely with commerce, with energy, with usda. you go across our government, we now have representatives from so many different agencies in country under chief of mission authority. so we do have to help our colleagues and other parts of the government understand the

role that they play in our 21st century state craft. and that's particularly true in e. because in order to practice what we do call economic statecraft, we want a team. we want the american team out there working for us. and i think that it's going to be challenging because the number of positions that commerce is able to fund, for example, in the arab spring region has dropped. and so we've been scrambling to try to help commerce keep personnel experts in north africa so they can work with us in order to be able to promote economic opportunity. you know, in a globalized world like the one we're in, the tools of foreign policy are not just within this department or even development just within usaid. so we have to be smarter about how we make a broader case. and so it's a very good question.

one of the reasons we consolidated what we did inside e was to try to get everything in one place so that we're more effective in putting forth our positions and then from that i hope we can in this new alignment of economic growth, energy, and the environment, be more effective in working with our colleagues across the government. but it's a challenge. and i appreciate you for raising it. >> madam secretary, this next question is probably one of the most discussed topics on the sounding board. todd schwartz asks are there any steps that can be taken to accelerate the upgrade of internet explorer on department systems. [ laughter ] >> i remember the first time i did a town hall, and i think i was asked about this.

i hope you agree we've made progress. we continue to make progress. we know how important this is for all of you. as i recall, it seems so long ago. but three years or so ago, we really didn't -- we really were not in the 21st century. let me put it that way. but under, you know, great leadership from pat and our team, we have made progress. so today i'm happy to -- [ laughter ] -- we really do read the sounding board, that google chrome will be deployed worldwide on february 14th. [ applause ] that's my valentine's president

to all of you. internet explorer 8 will be deployed on march 20th. [ applause ] and for more details, you can go to state cable 7330, which officially announced this january 25th. now google chrome is intended to be an optional browser. it may not work with all the department internet sites or applications, but we believe it will greatly improve the accessibility and performance with external sites. internet explorer 8 has been tested with department enterprise applications. it's precisely this sort of quality control testing that delays the deployment of newer versions of explorer.

pat's informed me that it's the assessment of our incredible crack information systems team that will skip internet explorer 9 completely and deploy internet explorer 10 on or before february of next year. so we're moving, moving, moving. and we appreciate the constant prodding, prodding, prodding that we get from the sounding board. >> good morning, madam secretary. my name is virginia benninghoff. i work in iap in the office of european affairs. and i have a question on our foreign policy, if i may. regarding the atrocities that happened in the beginning of the 20th century that some would label the armenian genocide, i am wondering why it is that we do not recognize it as such and if it has to do with our classification of what a

genocide is or more to do with our relationship with turkey? and given the recent legislation that was passed by lawmakers in france, criminalizing the denial of the armenian genocide, what our stance is on that. my understanding is that undersecretary sherman was there recently, and i'm wondering if that came up and what our position circumstances first, one of our great strengths is we do not criminalize speech. people can say nearly anything they choose and they do in our country. the first, of course, is integration which you may have heard is kind of my emphasis, my schtick, my mantra on that job, focusing on intelligence integration. absolutely mission critical for the intelligence community. our ultimate goal, our vision, if you will, is simply a nation made more secure because of a fully integrated intelligence community.

for all of the u.s. government, threats require us to commemorate responsible information sharing. secondly, doing this requires some standardization. we're pursuing some efficiencies, as all of us are, in our business. i met yet with our five eyes colleagues and one of them offered up the term that has become popular in his country in australia.

they call it the efficiency dividend which is, as he said, an orwellian euphemism for cuts. anyway, we're doing that as well. one of the things in the big idea department, somewhat influenced by budget pressure cuts is for the first time ever that's what i think should happen on that, too. [ applause ] >> good morning, madam secretary. the last time i was before you, i was an intern and now i'm a program analyst so it's quite an honor to be here before you today. >> good, good. >> my question is regarding foreign policy if i may. as a kurdish american, much of my interest focuses on the kurt state of iraqi political affairs. given what's been going on since the man troop withdrawal, i was wondering what the role of u.s. diplomacy is with that situation

and what you hope you will see in the future to ensure iraqi security and democracy and stability continue. >> well, first i'm delighted that you've gone from intern to full fledged employee in such a short period of time. and we're delighted and that's exactly the kind of movement of young people into our ranks that i'm thrilled to see. there is no -- there is no doubt all one has to do is follow the media, that there's a lot of political contention in iraq right now. the united states, led by our very able experienced ambassador jim jeffrey, i don't know that man has a sleep of more than an hour or two because he is constantly, along with his able team, reaching out, meeting with, cajoling, pushing the players starting with prime minister maliki not to blow this opportunity. let me be very clear. this is an opportunity for all areas of iraq, of all religious affiliation, of all backgrounds, this is an opportunity to have a unified iraq.

and the only way to do that is by compromising. and one of the challenges in new democracies is that compromise is not in the vocabulary, especially in countries where people were oppressed, brutalized over many years. they believe that democracy gives them the opportunity to exercise power and even though it's not the specific individual, saddam hussein is gone, he oppressed the shi'a, terribly abused the kurd, chemical attacks, he's gone but people's minds are not yet open to the full potential of what this opportunity can mean for them.

unfortunately there's a lot of line drawing and boundary imposing between different political factions. so we are certainly conveying in as strong a message as we can that these political difficulties and disagreements have to be peacefully resolved for the good of all iraqis and that everyone has a chance to grow the pie bigger to have more freedom, more economic prosperity by working together. it's not easy. it's unfortunately one of the challenges we face everywhere in the world right now. with the great movement toward democracy, which we welcome and applaud, it has upended a lot of

the historical experiences that people have held on to and there is a need to get moving beyond that. but it will take time. the united states will be firmly in the role of advising and mentoring and playing the go between in every way that we possibly can. but at the end of the day iraq is now a democracy but they need to act like one and that requires compromise. so i'm hoping that there will be a recognition of that and such a tremendous potential to be realized. iraq can be such a rich country. it's already, you know, showing

that with the oil revenue starting to flow again but problems have to be resolved. they cannot be ignored or mandated by authoritarianism. they have to be worked through the political process. [ applause ] >> madam secretary, we received two very similar questions that ask you about your vision for us. from the most senior employee to the most junior, in an era of limited resources, what is the one thing that we can do every day in our work and you're attitude to make sure we reflect the vision within the reality of the resources that we have. >> well that, is a very important question that would probably deserve a much longer answer but let me just say that part of the vision is in the qdtr. that is what drove our doing the qdtr and asked so many of you to

participate in help thinking through what the vision is for employee development, to have an openness to chang, to learn new skills, to be willing to collaborate and listen to one another, not to defend the past. if the past is worth defending in the values and the practices that we used, then make the case for them. not a reflexive this is the way we've always done it, this is how we expect to do it forever, i'm too old to change -- i relate to that. [ laughter ] it's both institutional and personal attributes that we are try together to examine. there's a opportunity -- i

always believe that the best change comes from the bottom up. it comes from empowered employees saying, look, i've got this great idea. [ applause ] so to everyone, feel that empowerment. and then to supervisors, managers, et cetera, be open to those ideas. not every idea is a good one. you have to say that. because even if you believe it and you've spent a long time working on it, doesn't necessarily mean it will carry the day. but how do you know unless you ask, unless you deliver and not just stand to one side and say, well, you know, if they only did what i would have them do or why are they doing that? well, that's not helpful to anybody. i am sure that we'll find it increases stress levels and all kinds of health problems. so come forward with ideas and then i want to encourage everyone at the supervisor

level, you know, to be open, to listen. doesn't mean you're going to agree or to accept but to have that give and take. and that is what we're looking for. when you think about 21st century diplomacy, we're asking, you know, our director general, we're asking fsi to envision what is the training, what are the new modes of thinking that we have to equip you with because you're not your mother's or your father's diplomat or foreign service officer or civil service expert. you're coming with a new set of challenges. so how can we help equip you but then how can you help prepare yourself to be ready? i think if you look at the qdr and go through that and imagine how this will lead to the vision of our role in the world, how we can be more effective, more

impactful, how we can go further on less because will's no guarantee in these austere times that we'll have what we ideally like, that starts a conversation. in kind of the office groupings, the subject matter groupings, the affinity groupings, have that conversation and come with ideas either through the sounding board or directly to people in positions of responsibility and let's see where it leads and we'll do our best. [ applause ] good morning, madam secretary. my name is leon gallanis, i worked for undersecretary kennedy. in your opening letter in the qdtr, you ask the question how >> iworked for undersecretary

kennedy. in your opening letter in the qdtr, you ask the question how do we do better? i'd like to say in order to meet the program goals of the qdtr, we need to have strong management platform in the department and usaid and an important component is how we manage data information. i just want you to know that we have an intra bureau working group which started in june 2011. that's working getting all the silos together to share data and access data better so you get that information you need quicker and more accurately and we would be keen on meeting with your staff and briefing them with our success and the work to be done. >> we will do that. you're 100% right. in today's world you can either manage data or be drowned by it. that's the choice. and if you start being drowned, the natural human inclination is just to ignore. so the smarter we can be about managing and presenting and utilizing data, so we'll follow through on that, pat, okay?

>> not a question. >> it's okay. a shameless but very important plug. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> good morning, madam secretary. my name is michelle lacorme. i'm a member of the civilian response corps. i wanted to know what your vision for the civilian response core and the interagency is in their role in the implement tax of the qddr in the next few years? >> great question. is rick barton here? there he is. rick's right in front of me. we were so fortunate to recruit rick to be the first leader of the cso, and i think his vision and what all of you are thinking through will answer that question. i want us to be able to deploy expertise in the form of americans both from the

government, from the outside if appropriate, but part of our network, to be on the ground, as i said in my remarks, doing what is necessary to protect us, promote our values and further our interests. and that's why this is so exciting. because i can't, standing here today, tell you exactly all of the different roles and functions that cso will perform. it will -- it already does have a very tight partnership with counterparts and a.i.d. we need to increase the flow of information and cooperation. but then going beyond that into the rest of the government. but i do know this. this was absolutely one of the most important decisions that came out of the qddr. we entered into it with a question, do we need this? we'd had some efforts that were

really quite important, but never were given the support, the resources, the attention and time that they deserved. so it was a natural question to say do we need this and the answer was resoundingly yes but it has to be done the right way. so i'm hoping that as we go through the startup and the consolidation of the cso, you'll be coming to me to say, well, here's what we need to do what we think we should be doing and i will be as responsive as i can. thank you. >> madam secretary, this question comes from noah dona from istanbul. it relates to staffing and career development. he says with the recent hiring surge, many mid-level foreign service positions were ceded to entry level in order to provide positions for those newly minted fsos. now that hiring has slowed and the first wave of these hires are approaching mid-level

bidding, how does the administration plan to return those positions to the mid-level business? >> i can tell you that hr is developing a plan to move positions where they're needed and when they're needed. we're aware of this problem. this will be done in close consultation with the bureaus because we obviously don't want anyone who came in on an entry level to feel like there's nowhere for them to go. so we're going to be taking a hard look at this. i mean, it was one of the good problems we had, like how were we going to quickly incorporate, integrate our new entry level hires because we had so many of them and that was our goal, to begin to refill our ranks, but now we have to take a look at what changes have to be made to kind of keep the momentum going for these young -- not all young but, you know, many young entry level people. so thank you. >> good morning, madam secretary.

my name is susan johnson. i'm the president of afsa. first of all, i'd like to thank you for that excellent and exciting update and overview of qddr imp lemation and for your really inspire add vo casey for all of us to embrace change, participate in it and see what we can do to make our agencies more effective in advancing and protecting u.s. interests. so thank you very much. afsa really welcomes this. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> madam secretary, president obama led his state of the union address with the remarks, and i'll quote, last month i went to andrews air force base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in iraq. together we offered a final proud salute to the colors, under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought and several thousand gave their lives. the president continued, for the

first time in nine years, there are no americans fighting in iraq. madam secretary, you know that all of us salute the accomplishments and sacrifices of our military colleagues and in fact many in our community are former veterans of the armed services. my question is, what are your ideas and thoughts on what the state department can do to ensure that the american people remember and better appreciate that we all, the men and women of the state department and our other foreign affairs agencies, are still there, are still in harm's way, are still taking care of business and advancing the interests of the united states. and the related question, how can afsa help? [ applause ] >> i think that's a very fair

question, and we are obviously trying to talk about it, trying to raise the visibility of it. this is the largest postconflict operation the state department has ever tried to lead and manage. it's hard. many of you have spent time trying to help us with this transition. but i think when i see the president tomorrow, i will mention to him the importance of also having presidential attention to our members of the civilian side of the ledger who are still in iraq and who are still facing a lot of threats and dangers. and he is very mindful of that, very grateful for it and i think will look for an opportunity to try to raise it to a higher visibility. so i thank you very much. and of course afsa has been a good partner in all of this work and we continue to appreciate

your support and your constructive criticism. thank you. [ applause ] >> madam secretary, we have another sin thi sis of two similar questions from elizabeth williams and adam coffman about the future of the state department and you in 2013. the state department has been very fortunate to have an experienced, intelligent, productive and passionate secretary these past few years. with the election season -- [ applause ] >> can we put that first part of the question in writing so i can put it in front of me when it gets really, really hard? >> we'll put it on your eer. with the election season fast

approaching, can you offer any predictions for the state department after the elections in november, specifically are you considering staying on or not? this is the synthesis. what could we do to persuade you to run for vice president? after your tenure here comes to an end, what will you do and what will become of us? >> oh, my goodness. first of all, it's one of the most extraordinary, wonderful experiences being able to work with all of you. which i am always telling people everywhere how privileged i am. i think i have made it clear that i will certainly stay on until the president nominates someone, and that transition can occur. but i think after 20 years, and it will be 20 years, of being on the high wire of american politics and all of the challenges