Diversity Thursday

Sounds like someone in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence gets it.

Diversity is a mission-critical imperative for the intelligence community (IC), and our definition goes beyond race and national origin, gender and disability. The IC’s mission depends on a workforce diverse in many dimensions, requiring a wide range of expertise and deep knowledge of other cultures, languages, perspectives and ideas.

....but they still feel a need to throw virgins in volcanos.

We also want to make sure that employees of all backgrounds feel they are welcome in our workplace and have an equal opportunity to advance and make a difference. To support this, we’ve recently established an IC-wide Affinity Network of 10 employee resource groups. Best-in-class organizations use these affinity groups to help recruit, retain, develop and mentor their top diversity talent. For example, we’ve sponsored a first-ever affinity group for IC employees of Middle Eastern and North African descent to provide these recruits and employees with a support system to help them navigate their careers as IC professionals.

Finally, we monitor closely our annual IC Employee Climate Survey. While the Partnership for Public Service recently named the IC one of the top five Best Places to Work in Government, we know we must continuously measure progress. In that regard, we have developed a form to collect more detailed ethnicity, national-origin and cultural-origin data from heritage applicants and employees; the voluntary form recently cleared the public notice period required by the Paperwork Reduction Act, and we hope to use it soon.

Above all, the success of these initiatives requires strong leadership commitment and robust collaborative partnerships — with heritage American communities and employees, equal employment opportunity, diversity and human capital professionals, and IC mission partners. By working together, we can and will make the IC an employer of choice, particularly for first- and second-generation Americans.

That last part is, I would bet a cup of coffee, the work of one of the co-authors, Patricia T. Taylor who is chief, intelligence community equal employment opportunity and diversity - AKA someone who is part of the Diversity Industry whose job depends on breaking and keeping people fed a diet of sectarianism on the job.

Well, we have a 50/50 here. I'll bet a six-pack of little chocolate donuts that the part I liked, the real definition of diversity, came from the other co-author, Donald Sanders, the associate director of national intelligence and chief human capital officer - you know, a dude with an eye on keeping the taxpayers absorbing oxygen.

Hat tip HalfOfTheSpear.