Council urges overhaul of State Department management

Dysfunctional human resources management, outdated information technology and crumbling buildings have created a crisis in morale at the State Department, a group of foreign affairs experts said in a memorandum to President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell. A task force of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, led by former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, urged Bush and Powell to commit the State Department to a "reform-for-resources" bargain with Congress. That would entail revitalizing the foreign affairs apparatus in exchange for a budget increase. "No government bureaucracy is in greater need of reform than the Department of State," the task force's memorandum said. "The Department of State suffers from long-term mismanagement, antiquated equipment and dilapidated and insecure facilities." Powell met with Carlucci shortly after the new Secretary of State arrived at the department. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said officials welcomed the report. "We have recognized the need for reform of many things in this building itself and started to look at issues of hiring, of retention," Boucher said. The Carlucci task force identified several major areas in need of reform:

• Human resources. The State Department's recruitment process fails to bring in enough people with the right skills, while the way people are treated after they are hired makes many of them want to leave, the task force said. The department has a deficit of 700 Foreign Service officers, or 15 percent of its requirements.
• Technology management. Communications and technology equipment are outdated. Personnel in some facilities cannot e-mail each other. Most overseas posts either operate on obsolete classified systems or have no classified connection to the rest of the government.
• Facilities maintenance. Overseas buildings are in serious disrepair, the task force said. The State Department "should not be in the business of constructing and managing buildings," the memorandum said. "The Office of Foreign Buildings Operations should be abolished and its functions transferred to an Overseas Facilities Authority established as a federally charted government corporation."
• Closed culture. The State Department's culture emphasizes confidentiality rather than openness, the task force said. That stymies the department's ability to communicate with Congress, other federal agencies and the public--both at home and abroad.

The task force estimated that in order to solve such problems under the "reform-for-resources" strategy, Congress would have to increase the international affairs budget by 6 percent. Another group of foreign affairs experts also published a report this month calling for State Department reform. The U.S. Commission on National Security, headed by former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., concluded the department is "demoralized and dysfunctional." The Carlucci and Hart-Rudman analyses echo a 1998 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which cited similar human resources, technology and organizational culture problems. In 1999, the State Department swallowed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the U.S. Information Agency as part of a reorganization. That has exacerbated some management problems, the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy said in a report last year. In a meeting with State Department employees in January, Powell said he would work to improve management. "You need the resources to do the job well, resources that will improve our facilities, resources that will provide adequate compensation, resources that will fix our infrastructure, resources that are necessary so that you can do your job well," Powell said.