The Department is responsible for recruiting highly qualified personell to all positions in the Foreign Service, and for providing the conditions for sound financial management throughout the the Service. The department is headed by Director General Andreas Gaarder.

The department consists of the following sections

• Section for Human Resources

• Section for Organisational Development

  The Section for Organisational Development is responsible for organisational reforms and cross-cutting restructuring or change management processes in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the diplomatic and consular missions. The Section is also responsible for leadership development in the Foreign Service.

• Finance Section

  Finance section is responsible for budgets, accounting, grant management, agency governance and organisational management.

• Grant Management Unit

  The Grant Management Unit is responsible for developing and maintaining rules and standards for grant management in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Unit provides support and guidance on matters relating to grant management.

• Unit for Agency Governance

  The Unit for Agency Governance is responsible for the Ministry’s governance of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and the Norwegian Agency for Exchange Cooperation (Norec). It is also responsible for coordinating organisational management processes in the Foreign Service.

• Diplomatic Academy

  The Diplomatic Academy is responsible for strategic planning, guidelines and tools for competence-building in the Foreign Service. This includes strategic skills management and course design and implementation, management training, preparatory courses for employees to be posted abroad, meetings of posted employees, induction of new employees, and the Foreign Service Trainee Programme. Language training and translation services are organised as two separate units within the Academy.