Inside America’s Global Back Office: How the State Department Keeps Government Running Overseas

This week on the GovNavigators Show, Adam and Robert sit down with Daniel Gaush, Acting Director of the International Cooperative Administrative Support Services Service Center at the U.S. Department of State, for a fascinating look at one of the federal government’s largest and least understood shared services operations.

Daniel explains how the ICASS system coordinates administrative support for more than 300 federal entities across embassies and consulates worldwide, everything from HR and motor pools to security, facilities, and logistics. He shares stories from a 24-year career spanning Morocco, China, Afghanistan, and Washington, including negotiating trade agreements, touring a Chinese nuclear reactor, and managing support operations in wartime environments.

The conversation explores the promise and pain points of shared services: balancing costs, managing interagency consensus, handling global crises, and adapting to major structural changes, such as the integration of USAID functions into the State Department. Daniel also reflects on the unique culture of the Foreign Service and offers advice for the next generation of Americans considering international public service careers.

Show Notes:

• Final Report from The President’s Council to Assess the Federal
  Emergency Management Agency

What's on the GovNavigators' Radar?

• May 13: House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Hearing: DoW Financial Management: Examining Progress and New Audit Approaches 
• May 14: House Oversight & Government Reform Hearing: Reducing America’s National Debt: Rooting Out Federal Waste, Fraud, and Overregulation 
• May 14-15: ACT-IAC’s Emerging Technology & Innovation Summit

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Welcome everyone to the Gov Navigator Show, a government-focused program that won't make you seasick. We're the Gov Navigators. I'm Robert Check. And I'm Adam Hughes. We hope to enlighten and liven your week with news and insightful entertaining guests, all on the topic of government management.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Enjoy today's episode of Gov Navigators, brought to you by the creative geniuses behind the award-winning podcast Fedheads.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Robert, we're on the other side, finally, I think, of quite a slog of weeks here at GovNavigators.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Gov Navigators have been running hard. Yeah. It's time for a break.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

It is. But let's talk about some of the fantastic stuff we've been doing. Great. So we were at we were out at the Professional Services Council conference in wild and wonderful West Virginia last week.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Hot sulfur springs.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Weather was nice. Rained for a hot second, but overall, pretty good weather. We had a great time. We got to see some clients. We got to take intake all of the fun that the folks at PSC put together for that conference. So kudos to them for a yet another successful year.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

But it was also pretty meaty. A number of senior administration officials trekked out there, shared their views. I think we left with some pretty clear-eyed views of the administration's priorities, whether you like them or not.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

That's right. Agreed. And then this week we had the great honor to attend the Sammy's again, the service to America medals. And it was a wonderful night, maybe a little subdued, but we always love part of what we do this entire show for is to promote the amazing work that goes on by people in the federal government. And what a night to celebrate some of the really overachievers who are working for the U.S. government right now.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah. Not as many uh awardees as in the past, because I think the administration and the partnership may not have as close a working relationship as they have in the past. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_02 2:17

I think that is a very good characterization. And you know, I think they just had fewer agencies participating, fewer applications. So still sensational work that they were promoting and awarding. But yeah, if you want to read more, just do a quick Google search. You'll find a couple articles that cover that.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

One of the highlights for me was the tribute to partnership president Max Steyer for his 25 years of leadership of the organization. Love the man. And I was grateful to the team over there for putting that together.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Yeah. And he's done sensational work from the from day one, from the beginning, creating the partnership and continuing to promote the importance of an independent civil service and to make sure that we're recognizing people who work on behalf of us in for the government. And the party was pretty dang good too, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, I haven't read the crime reports to see if that was reflected there. That's right. We should make sure we cover that, Chloe. Make sure you do a quick scan. While we were out and about, the president's council to assess FEMA came out with its final report. Yeah. Listening sessions in 13 cities, surveyed 130 state and local partners, and had direct engagement with all 50 states and territories. Basically, the bottom line, FEMA as a brand and an agency is done. But not really. Basically, it's a leaner, meaner fighting machine, is what they're looking for.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Which may not be bad. Well, but we would be remiss if we didn't underscore the central role that FEMA plays in coordinating across state lines, particularly when there's disagreements during disasters.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

A lot more people, including maybe the Congress, will have a say in what actually happens with these recommendations.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

We would hope so, although I also saw the Wall Street Journal put an article about out about how Congress is struggling to do the bare minimum these days. So hopefully they have enough room on their overflowing plate to comment on this because it is important.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

I know we're done with the news segment, but I can't go without mentioning this story in the Wall Street Journal. They're tracking equity interest that the government's taking in industry. Ten companies have sold part of theirs themselves to the United States government. Wow. Ten percent of Intel, 8.9 billion, and a golden share of US steel. The Spirit Airlines fell through, but we were close to a majority stake in that declining operation. Well, because people love Spirit Airlines. No, wait a minute. Don't get us in trouble. We just lost a sponsor. I think we're done here. How many shared services conversations can one podcast have? One that people continue to listen to? I don't know, actually. We're gonna test that theory, and it's all on the shoulders of Daniel Gaush, the acting director of the iCast Service Center, which he's gonna tell us all about. Daniel, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Thank you. Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

So before we dive into the Service Center, tell us about you. How did you land in this line of work?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Long story, but I will try to make it short. It started with a college professor who was very keen on the State Department. He had actually worked for some Senate committee back in the day in the 70s.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

And I really some Senate committee.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Careful, careful.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Too fewer Senate guys you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Because that as well is an interesting story. But he got me set on the State Department, and I would have joined a little earlier, but fate intervened and I had wisdom teeth removed on the same day that I was supposed to have taken the Foreign Service exam. And so I didn't. And it waited for another several years, probably another four or five years later when I finally took the exam again past.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

So you just kind of you just kind of didn't come back to it. Like that's all you're I mean, I had a long I couldn't eat solid food for like three weeks when I had my wisdom teeth out. But I feel like you know I had Chinese food the night that night at five.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

But not a whole lot of wiggle room in the exam time frame, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. So you said you were always interested in this, and this was sort of the impetus for it.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Well, since college, yeah. And in the interim between college and when I actually joined the State Department, I was in the Army for four years. And that gave me an extra impetus because I didn't want to react to world events in the military in a military sense. I wanted to be proactive and try and prevent things from like that from happening in a diplomatic sense.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

So you were a foreign service officer for maybe the the about half of your service uh at the State Department.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Well, over half so far. Uh 14 years foreign service, last 10 or so I've been in civil service.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

So just give us a little flavor. What was that like? Where were you?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

I had started my first diplomatic assignment was in Morocco, a dream come true. Because since a teenager, I'd wanted to go to Morocco. Also served in southern China, in Slovenia, and briefly a temporary duty assignment in Afghanistan, as well as a few domestic assignments in DC. It was wonderful. I enjoyed the variety. I enjoyed the international experience. Two of my assignments, I was able to bring my family with me. So that was wonderful all around. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

So tell us more about the ICAS Service Center and what's the makeup of that organization? What services does it provide?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Okay. So the ICAS Service Center essentially is a kind of a neutral third-party entity that manages this cost-sharing system, which we call ICAS. Full name is the International Cooperative Administrative Support Services System, but we shorten it to ICAS. And it basically provides shared services, administrative services at embassies and consulates all around the world to all US government agencies who are present in those embassies and consulates. So instead of setting up 50 different admin shops, there's one admin shop and everybody shares the cost of it. So we manage that program, the financial and policy aspects of it. Uh operationally, though, the regional bureaus and the State Department actually provide the services. So we don't provide the services, we manage the system. And sometimes it can get fairly interesting. And that shared services history goes back a while. It's changed names, it's changed properties over the years, but it actually started in 1955. As far back as then, there were these reimbursement agreements and shared services and shared costs. Although the most recent iteration of that shared services ecosphere was back in 1998. That's when ICAS as a named system started.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

So I'm thinking just briefly about Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything for a minute there.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

I'm good with people, you know.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Yeah. That's right. So is that structure that you just talked about, is that challenging? I mean, it's sort of similar to other shared services centers, particularly for agencies that run a shared service center and provide services for a different agency, maybe. But talk about that. Is there a tension there? How does the coordination between those different parts of the State Department go?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah, it's always an interagency balance. There's over 300 different offices or bureaus spread out across the entire executive branch who pay into the ICAS system and receive services. So we have a lot of stakeholders we have to manage, and both within the State Department and within the interagency. There's disagreements, yes, but we try by consensus to come to agreement on a lot of things and change policy. And we're very proud of the fact that over the last, you know, 20, you know, 28 years, we've only had to officially vote on a handful of things. Everything else over all those years have been by consensus. And so that's a we're very proud of that. But it's not a small undertaking to fund all the administrative and some other support systems, including buildings and security and other things like that, we consider administrative services. It's$3.4 billion a year. That is not a small amount to support our diplomatic mission overseas. And so when you talk about dividing those costs among all those entities, you know, it runs into their budgets and it's all a zero-sum game. So it can be it can be tens of times.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

You you said something that piqued my interest that it can sometimes get interesting. Well, yeah. That's believable. Tell me how tell me some of the more interesting things that you've had to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Oh my gosh. Most recently, with the integration of many USAID functions into the State Department and the massive impact that had to embassy customer populations overseas, customers of the admin sections and other services. So that was probably in the last couple of years the most challenging and interesting thing that we've had to deal with. But there's been others. The stand-up of a large presence in Iraq and Afghanistan over the years in a very, you know, basically a wartime environment, and trying to provide administrative services under those conditions. That that's difficult. And uh and it costs a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Can I get some toner cartridge here to Air Force Base right away, please?

SPEAKER_00 11:48

No, yeah, would that we're like that? But I do I remember learning about certain air assets in certain countries and where the motor pole and a traditional motor pool is just cars, but in one country, the motor pole actually has a boat because mission personnel had to cross rivers and other things like that in the capital. A country in the South Central Asia Bureau had airplanes, both helicopters and propeller aircraft. So, I mean, very interesting types of services being provided.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah. Adam and I worked together at a consulting firm that did some support in Afghanistan. And I think in processing the expense receipts, some flags were raised that this is not an area we want to really focus on. Yes. That is true. I think Laura, like a lot of petty cash involved in the palace rentals.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Yeah. Yes. But you know, it's important work, but never not necessarily not necessarily for everybody. So, Daniel, tell us tell us what you've seen in your time. You've been at the State Department for 24 years. Yeah. And I think the kind of the mission support work that you've been doing, I'm sure has allowed you to sort of touch all aspects of the overseas mission of the State Department. What was your favorite part or your favorite time? And maybe that was when you were a Foreign Service officer. It doesn't have to be the new stuff, right? And why?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Many examples I could call up, but just two or three come to mind helping to negotiate a free trade agreement with Morocco during my first tour. First first tour officer, but landing right into that type of situation, supporting the other government agencies involved. And then I had a side task on that and was to help negotiate a science and technology cooperation agreement as part of the whole, you know, FTA Coji experience. That was fascinating to me as a first tour officer. I was in an economic officer role at the time. I didn't go straight into management roles in the department. And so that was very interesting. Also, with the economic officer role, often comes what's called the ESTH portfolio, environment, science, technology, and health. Again, something very fascinating to me, and which I did again as an economic officer in Guangzhou, China. Two years there, the commercial, productive economic powerhouse of China in the South. And being an economic officer there was fascinating. In my ESTH portfolio there in Guangzhou, I was able to go inside of a Chinese nuclear reactor and take a tour.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

That was wait, seriously?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah. Had the whole, you know, strip down to your underwear, get sensed to see if there was any risky. So you're not recording anything.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

So we got judgments. It's a family, it's a family program.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

There you go. We got jobs. But I was wearing the glasses as I am now, and I was we were walking by the spent reactor rod pool, and I was starting to lean over to look down at the pool, and they're like, Be careful, if your glasses come off, you're not getting them back. They're gone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

And then other things, you know, the experiences of again in Morocco, being in a reception at the ambassador's residence, the usual what people usually think the diplomatic corps is like. And then just casually running into the Prime Minister of Morocco and chatting with him for a couple of minutes. That was you know very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

That's great. Those are great stories.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

But I'll but some of the smaller experiences, you know, giving a talk to a high school in Slovenia or visiting a grant recipient in Kabul, Afghanistan, are just very rewarding, very fascinating experiences.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

That's fantastic. Talk about the operation of ICAS. And a lot of shared services suffer from inadequate resources or unwilling customers or you know rogue duplicative functions. How do you manage the collaboration that ensures it's successful and that it doesn't lead to disappointment or cost growth outside of the shared service center?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah. Great question. Certainly you want to provide the best services you can to lowest cost. In some areas of the world, that's difficult to do at low cost anyway. I think we have a very good track record of providing very good services. But yeah, the cost sometimes, the sticker shock about how much that costs can be a challenge for some other agencies. And even within the State Department, uh, there's a phrase that is used fairly often. It's called state affordability. State has to pay its own ICAS bills, and sometimes they can be very large because we have a lot of people, obviously, overseas, and we subscribe to all the services provided. So the bills are generally larger than other agencies. One statistic that's remained fairly constant for about 10, 15 years is even though other non-state agencies make up about half of the population of embassies and consulates, they only pay about 30 collectively altogether, pay about 30% of the bill. State department with half the people pay about 70% of the bill. And that's because we have to subscribe to everything in the State Department, whereas other agencies don't have to subscribe to everything. So they can pick and choose a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

And they have options to procure things, say overseas that are difficult or hard, or which one would they opt out? Why would an agency do that?

SPEAKER_00 17:18

In some cases, they may just not need it. They may not employ any local staff. So they wouldn't need to be local staff HR services. Or if they have a dedicated vehicle paid for by their own agency funds, they won't need to use the embassy motor pool. So there's lots of situations where they wouldn't need a pretty community.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Whereas the State Department, it's a yes basically down the list almost, depending on. Yeah. Okay, I got you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah. So that's yeah, keep going. Cost growth is a tough one. We if we don't uh increase the budgeted amounts a little bit every year to account for inflation, then it acts almost like a de facto budget cut. You know, flatlining our budgets will lead to increasing real cuts in our ability to secure things and provide services over time. So that's it's always a challenge. There's never enough hours in the day as a service provider because I was an iCast service provider overseas, as well as a customer at different posts. So I've seen both sides.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

You talked about voting. You mentioned voting earlier. Can you tell us a little bit about who votes? Is it can you is there is there a procedure and how is that like announced? Is it communicated down from the center itself? Talk about the voting process.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yeah, well, it's not exactly a referendum that everybody in the group can vote. The ICAS Service Center essentially acts as the secretariat for two governing bodies in ICAS that set policy, make exceptions, you know, various governance functions. One is the ICAS Executive Board, that's the highest governing body. The State Department chairs, the IEB, but there's about 15 other agency representatives there. Then there's the ICAS working group. And any ICAS bill payer basically can be part of the ICAS work group, much larger. Any policy or significant budgetary issues are brought to the ICAS working group. It has a couple of subcommittees that address policy and budget issues. And we writ any policy change, we're bringing to the IWG first, and then if needed, up to the IEB. And yeah, we talk about it, we present it. The ICAS service center tries to research it as much as the issues as much as we can and present the full picture so that everyone has as much information as they can to make a decision. And then we talk about it. And different people have different equities, different concerns, they have questions, additional info they need, we try and get it to them. And if after all of that, they still can't reach consensus, i.e., no one is objecting. If we can't reach consensus, then we call for a vote. And there's certain procedures in our smart affairs handbook that spell out how that's to be done. But you know, depending on how many people are present and whether it's an electronic or in-person vote, it's either half or two-thirds the majority that carries the day. Yeah, we've only had to vote a handful of times in 28 years.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Can you share a little bit about the Foreign Service? I'm sort of assuming folks know all about it, but talk about some of the idiosyncrasies of that slice of the federal workforce.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, sure. Foreign service relatively unique. There are other executive branch agencies that have foreign service officers, for example, and foreign commercial service in the Department of Commerce. There are Foreign Service officers when they go overseas. USAID, when they were still overseas, were considered a foreign affairs agency in that respect. But yeah, the Foreign Service governed by somewhat different laws, even than the civil service, different regulations and policies and procedures. Different retirement requirements. Foreign service officers are required to retire at age 65. I don't know if that's because the hardship of overseas life in many different countries and many different environments is so demanding that they don't think anyone over 65 should be doing that or exposed to that. But yeah, mandatory retirement age 65, whereas civil service, there is no mandatory retirement age, different, you know, retirement benefits and whatnot. You can retire a little earlier in the Foreign Service than civil service folks can. But the big thing is the expectation of the Foreign Service officer is that you are going to spend most of your career overseas. It is not a domestic role, primarily. So, not any hard and fast rule about how many years out of a career you're supposed to be overseas. But in general, folks like to spend at least 75% of their career overseas working at embassies and consulates. And then every once in a while coming back to DC to get that headquarters experience and to network and to learn things that you wouldn't overseas. And I saw that in the management field very starkly. Management work overseas very different. The management work of domestically.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

So, Daniel, this has been great. I think we got time for one more question. Can you share a little of your perspective and advice for people who maybe are sitting in that college class like you were and are interested in these topics in the State Department, in the Foreign Service, or in many in the other variety of other ways where you could serve the U.S. government and interests overseas? What advice would you give to folks now who are looking to do that?

SPEAKER_00 22:24

I would say that if you have that desire to, you know, it's that cliche, but to see the world, to live in foreign countries, to learn about other cultures, to bring your skills to bear overseas on behalf of the US government and the American people, whether that's your language skills, your intercultural communication skills, your subject matter expertise in politics or economics or public affairs or whatever. And if you liked a variety of moving around every two or three years, also that was very appealing to me. But if that appeals to you as well, I mean, take the test and go for it. Sure. The testing process is uh is involved. There's a written test and then an oral exam day. And but I it's well, well worth the effort. And it can be an extremely rewarding career and a beneficial one for the country. We do need the people with all types of experience to go overseas and help our in our foreign affairs.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Well, what an inspirational note to end on. Daniel, thanks for being on and congratulations on a great career. So grateful for your service.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Thank you. Pleasure being here. And hopefully the career is not over yet.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

You'll come back in a decade.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Really fascinating. Really glad that we got a chance to talk to him.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

So uh big week. It'll be capped by ACTIAC's annual emerging technology and innovation summit.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

That's right. Thursday and Friday this week, local here in DC in Crystal City, Virginia. Not on the Eastern Shore. No. So same great lineup, I think. Just a little closer to home for us.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

But the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be busy again. Two hearings this week. One on DOW's financial management, that perennial challenge. There'll be a lot to talk about there. And then reducing America's national debt, rooting out federal waste fraud and over-regulation. Is that where we're calling it now? Waste fraud and over-regulation? It's not waste, fraud, and abuse, it's waste fraud and overregulation.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

I think that's right. Is my former boss, Senator Ken Conrad, testifying at that? Long time leading voice about the importance of reducing the debt. But yeah. It's good they're having the hearing. I'm glad someone's focused on it.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

And then a big event, the Shea House. Uh Mary Claire Pluto Shea graduates from Connecticut College.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

One of the most renowned institutions in our country. Fantastic news. Big congratulations to you, to Eva, to Mimi, everybody. And this is, you're done now. You got three graduates. There's just nothing else for you all to do.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Three graduate students, you mean? Have a great week.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Gov Navigator Show, brought to you by GovNavigators. We sure hope you enjoyed it and learned something in the process and didn't get seasick. Right, of course. If you want to know more about us and what we're up to, please follow us on social media or visit govnavigators.com. Ahoy!