your departments have taken to coordinate federal language education programs? >> thank you, again for that question. as you know, we have a premiere language foreign service training institute at the foreign service institute and we make available places at the foreign service institute for other agencies to participate in our language training program. we also participated in interagency committees that look at language training. we think it's very important as our embassies represent the platform for all agencies overseas for those agencies also to have people with language skills who arrive to fill their positions, as well. so we see it as key to all of our foreign policy goals to have other agency individuals with the requisite language training. >> sir, by far our biggest effort is the national security education board which helps us run the national security education program. this board has -- was established by senator borin in

1991 and has been meeting since '94. it brings together about seven federal agencies. and the national security education program has done its main goal is to establish federal partnerships among the federal government. partnerships with federal and state entities, and even public private partnerships. in doing so, we've helped create state road maps for education. these road maps are an opportunity for individual states to work with our flagshi institutions. and they create a clearinghouse

for best practices in providing language instruction to our kids. this pipeline then flows through elementary school, middle school, high school, and into our flagship colleges where we provide several initiatives the scholarships and the grants to make sure we're not only creating folks with an awareness of language but some with that professional level of expertise. where we sponsor an immersive experience overseas. and that creates a better pool for not only d.o.d. but all of our federal partners to draw from. within dod, we have several initiatives, our project general officer. we have a new pilot with rotc candidates, and several initiatives for our federal area

officers. and we already heard about our defense language institute to create classes for military members to come in and learn. some of the teaching devices that are available through dli are also open to federal partners. thank you, sir. >> thank you. ms. north? >> so one of the better ways we are actually collaborating with our partners is through the national virtual translation center. this is a center that was created as a result of the usa patriot act back in 2001 and then in 2003, the fbi became the executive agent for this center under the odni.

what this center does is they are virtual capability for the u.s. government and the intelligence community where they've provided support, not only for the intelligence community but for dod, the combatant commands particularly at one center we have in doha where they provide regional expertise to the embassies in that region. we're also a member of the interagency language round table, and the foreign language executive committee or flex com which is an interagency committee where best practices are shared and different initiatives and the outcomes of those initiatives. one of the results of that is the fbi created a language quality program where all of our products are then quality controlled before they go out the door. that became a best practice, and that process and methodology for that was shared among our partners.

not only here in the u.s., but also overseas. and then we were just continuing to leverage the other ic partners as far as technology is concerned. as we know that as technology develops, we need to be able to triage our collection faster and in a more expeditious manner. we're hoping that through the combined efforts of all of our partners that this technology will advance to a rate that we can use it on a daily basis and that we'll cut back the time it takes us to actually review that collection that is a priority for us. >> ms. nordin? >> the start talk program that the dni initiated as part of the national security language initiative in which teachers and students in the elementary and secondary school system are treated to a summer of study and interchange in the languages

that they have. there's a number of the community meeting places where we all get together. it is a primary one which is currently led by a employee of the army. however that unchartered and unfunded organization is doing just fine after 30-some years. and it is -- its work is added to by the foreign language executive committee of the odni. the state department's fsi is a dpreat host to this organization. and you have the defense language steering committee. the national education security education program, all of these things work together, sir. it is the most collaborative group of people that i have ever worked with. thank you. >> thank you.

>> this question is for the four of you and for the national security agencies. dod has filled only 20% of the positions with language requirements with qualified employees, and other agencies here are struggling with this issue, as well. what challenges are your departments facing in recruitment, hiring, and retaining personnel with the needed language skills? and what steps have you taken to address these challenges? >> thank you again for that question. we're actually doing very well now in filling our language-designated positions with people with the requisite language training. and right now the state department is at about 70%.

we have a very high bar for that, and that is people who have tested recently in the language at a 3.3 level. it's because we've done a lot of work over the past few years with the training flow we were able to develop based on our 3.0 diplomacy hiring. we've hired over the past few years, about 15% more so that we can put people in language training while others are in the jobs. we're somewhat concerned as we approach the next year because we don't have the hiring float. we think we will only be able to hire to attrition and we need to continue to encourage more hiring and get support and resources for more hiring to continue to have that training to continue to train qualified people. >> thank you.

>> yes, sir. well, i've talked a lot about our first challenge and that's to try to improve the pool. after folks come in, we have sort of two ways we think about this. teaching folks who come in their language capability. defense language institute and foreign language center. and that's creating an in-house of language speakers. this is hard and it's expensive, but it does serve its purpose. we're also using the language training centers. in order to further improve our language capabilities, we have -- we're trying to improve how

we use these folks. you may have seen recently that the army is creating regionally aligned forces. and this will help us build expertise in -- in other cultures as well as give service focal points for folks who speak those languages around the world to go and practice. we're also trying to expand how we use over the last several years we've tried to expand how we use heritage speakers. we have the national service language core which is a very important surge capacity. that's about 196 languages that are at our disposal, and there's no way we could've created such a competency starting from scratch. we're very thankful for that. we also have something called the 0-9 program and the mavny program, these are methods for heritage speakers to come and serve as uniformed military members and serve as in-house language and cultural experts.

these folks have been critical to our efforts in iraq and afghanistan over the last ten years. and we also have the defense language institute's english language center, and again that's to increase the language capacity of our partners. >> thank you, mrs. north? >> so as i mentioned earlier, we actually have a linguist workforce of over 1,400 which is an 85% increase from 9/11. and a retention rate at 94%. so we're actually doing fairly well in that regard. we've implemented what we call a workforce planning model where we actually targeted recruitment toward languages where there's a shortfall or anticipated need. our hiring goal is 90% fill rate. we currently are at 88% and we anticipate we are going to meet our fiscal year '12 goal. and the flexibility we have is the workforce of contract linguist and language analyst. as a result we've reduced our

average applicant processing time and we're down to now ten months. which for us is a really good news story. the challenges that we face in recruiting and hiring is difficulty in finding those individuals who can pass the foreign language test battery at the level we require. they also need a polygraph examination and a full scope background. and our requirements that a lot of our material has to be submitted to a court of law for evidentiary purposes, we have a higher bar set for our language skills. we have an average of 1 in 10 applicants getting through that applicant process. we're competing with everyone else here at the table for the same resources. the way that we mitigate those

challenges is through recruiting fairs that we actually go out to look at the native and heritage communities we advertise in those foreign language newspapers. we put out press releases and we do in person events. we also attend university hiring events and the intelligence community has a virtual career fair that we also attend. and then we leverage the other language-enabled employees in the fbi. we are able to provide them with a limited amount of foreign language incentive pay where if they have a language critical to our needs, we can award them for that ability. we also leverage our ic partners through cross-community resource sharing. so we host joint duty assignments interagency short-term temporary duty assignments. we work with the national security education program as i

mentioned before. and that heritage language speakers program. and still we do have foreign language needs and those continue to be arabic the dialects. >> mr. nordin? >> one of the difficulties that we have had has always been the inability to take people away from the positions where they're actively using their language and send them off to school to learn their language better or to do other jobs. it's a bit like -- we are very appreciative of the training float that was granted to the dni. for a number of conditions so we can send some of these people off to get their enhancement training. but the biggest difficulty we face, sir, i feel is in that our leadership and i can't -- the name's specific, but let's say

the general entity leadership is as unaware of the needs for language within their organizations as the general populus is aware -- is failing to be aware of the needs for language in their community. it is a national disgrace in that respect, sir. and it's that lack of knowledge that we need to correct. we need to find a way to communicate to our people just how important that interpreter translator at the social services level is to a community's well-being. so that is our biggest education

challenge, i feel. >> thank you very much, mr. nordin. >> doctor, you mentioned earlier the national language service corps, will you please discuss how the corps addresses the department's language needs? as well as any plans to further develop the corps? >> yes, sir. the service corps recruited -- there's about 2,200 members at this point and about 500 more applicants. i mentioned before that this represents about 196 languages around the world. there's a national pool that looks like our inactive reserve and dedicated pool that looks like our active reserve. and what this means is it is truly a surge capacity for those emergent needs that need to be

filled. that dedicated pool represents a predictable and very broad capacity for languages that are not commonly found. several geographic combatant commanders, you know, to include pay com and africom are regularly drawing from this. our nato-oriented units are drawing on these capabilities as well as key agencies. non-dod agencies and we've heard from some of them today include everywhere from fbi to fema, irs, department of justice, center for disease prevention, and several states, individual states have drawn from this service corps. and i guess in a time of fiscal austerity, it's useful to point out that we've actually been

able to recapture some of the investments we've made in federal employees and that at about 8% of the service corps have previously had federal backgrounds. so we're recapturing those language capabilities. the national language service corps is something we rely on a lot. and as, you know, it's relatively new in our world. and as word is getting around, we expect the demand for this capability to increase. so it's something that we take very seriously. >> thank you. let me ask my final question to the entire panel. what do you envision as the end goal -- the end goal for language capacity? and what resources or authorities are needed to reach that goal?

i would like to discuss the department's vision for national language capacity, and i would like the other witnesses to discuss language capacity within your departments. so that's my question to the entire panel. it may begin. >> thank you. senator, akaka. well, ultimately we are really trying to prepare the nation for the global 21st century society that we're going into. and that requires as we've outlined in our international strategy the development of global competencies in our citizenry. this will lead to positive outcomes all around. in addition to the very focused national security concerns, there is improved understanding

of the world, greater effectiveness in our business dealings with other countries and other regions of the world. also, greater understanding of the diversity within our own country as we draw from we're going to be working in the future. we have -- as we draw students from across the world, they represent a potential untapped resource because they are really bridges to communities all over the world. we are a nation that unlike many other countries, we are defined by an idea that draws people from all over the world. and it has for the lifetime of our country. and so that is -- that is a very powerful asset that we have. and i think that preserving and expanding that cultural diversity and the language that

people bring is something that i think will stand us in good stead in the global society of the future. >> well, i've always felt the diversity of our country as strengths. and that's part of that part of the strength. >> absolutely. >> thank you. >> ambassador? >> thank you, again. the department of state has a huge responsibility of carrying out our diplomatic goals all over the world. and in order to do that, we have to have a workforce that has the language skills to do it wherever we are in the world. so what we see in the future or hope for in the future is to be able to recruit people with those language skills when they come into the foreign service so that we're able to deploy them as quickly as possible to those areas of the world where they are required. and we'd like to be able to have the resources to continue to train them in their languages to improve their language skills so that as they go up in the

foreign service they're better able to negotiate for our government to help us prevent wars. this is a huge responsibility that we have and we know that we need to have people with language skills to carry out those responsibilities. >> thank you. >> doctor? >> yes, sir. we live with two realities. the first is that we are the biggest, largest consumer of language capabilities that we're the biggest hirer of folks -- we have the largest needs of folks with language requirements in the federal government and probably nationwide. and these are profound needs. these are needs in some of the most difficult languages out there. the second reality is that, except for a gifted few, learning language is hard. it's not something that you do once and it's yours forever. you have to sustain that expertise throughout your career.

and especially with the fiscal realities being what they are, our end state is the furtherance of a national plan, a national partnership. we cannot meet our needs alone. partnerships, like i said among the federal -- our federal partners to share best practices on how to help k through 12 to keep that pipeline coming. practices on how to improve and sustain language capability once they've come in our doors. and further partnerships with congress to help keep this pivotal national issue. thank you, sir. >> thank you. >> doctor -- i mean ms. north. >> so, since 9/11, the fbi fisa collection in counterterrorism matters has increased significantly and we

don't see that trend reversing at all. we project that the demand for translation services will only continue to increase. so the challenge for us is achieving the goal of translating all of the material that we collect. we're never going to be able to do that because of what we collect and the volume that continues to come in. so, really what we need to be able to do is partner with our other agencies in the community, the intel community and the civilian community so that we have the resources that we need then to remain flexible so that we can meet those new and emerging threats as they appear as years go along, the languages that are going to be in demand are going to change. right now, we cannot predict what those languages will be 20 years from now, but now is the time we actually have to start training our workforce for those languages 20 years in the future. so to have those resources to remain flexible so we can

reconfigure our workforce and also to help work on the technology so that we can triage the material we're getting to be able to i.d. the speaker, i.d. the language, look to see what we can do to actually focus our analysts so their work becomes more productive and not such a sifting through of all the collection that we have. >> thank you very much. mr. nordin? >> i believe the director has laid a strategy of increasing the number of persons in the intelligence community who have command of other languages, cultures, knowledge of the countries. and augments that increase with key technologies inserted at critical points within our intelligence collection and analytic systems. so that you facilitate the -- and control the volumes of

material that are being processed. and there is no one solution to the problem. it lies in the nation itself understanding the need for foreign language in their daily lives. thank you. >> thank you. i want to thank this panel very much for your responses and your statements, of course. you've been very helpful. and i want to wish you well as we continue to increase the capacity and use the resources we have. it's another part to this we need to, in coordination, look at other possible resources in other places that maybe will help, as well. you know just as well as i do. but i want to wish you well, you're doing a great job, but still have a little more to do.

and so i want to thank you for what you're doing and wish you well in your work. thank you. >> i want to welcome mr. andrew lawlis, member of the globalization and localization

association. and ceo of dig it strategies for contents. also i'd like to introduce dr. alan goodman, a member of the council on foreign relations task force on u.s. education reform and national security. and president of the institute of international education. and dr. dan davidson who is president of the american councils for international education and president-elect of the joint national committee for languages. it is the custom as you know this committee to swear in all

witnesses so i ask you to please rise and raise your right hand. do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you god? thank you. let it be noted for the record that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. before we start, i want you to know that your full written statements will be made a part of the record. and i'd like also to remind you please limit your oral remarks to five minutes. so mr. lawlis, would you please proceed with your statement? >> -- my testimony about the business of language in the u.s. i will do so on behalf of the globalization and association