Secretary of State makes management his top budget priority

Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday backed his promise of better management at the State Department with dollar signs, asking for a 19 percent budget increase for personnel, technology, security and other behind-the-scenes costs. The increase, included in detailed Bush administration fiscal 2002 budget figures sent to Congress Monday, breaks with the tradition of devoting more international affairs budget hikes to foreign assistance than to State Department operations. Numerous studies in recent years have contended that State has lost effectiveness because administrations have neglected management issues. "The President's budget provides for a major investment in the people, the instruments and the infrastructure of America's foreign policy establishment," Powell said in a statement. "This budget represents the first monetary step in revamping and reinvigorating both the organization for the conduct of foreign policy and the foreign policy itself." The administration's proposed $23.8 billion international affairs budget for 2002--which includes foreign assistance programs, the Peace Corps, the Agency for International Development and dues to international organizations--is a 5.3 percent increase over 2001's budget. The account covering "administration of foreign affairs" would be $5.5 billion next year, a 19 percent increase. Management priorities include:

• Filling 546 new positions by hiring 310 Foreign Service officers, 50 civil service professionals and 186 security specialists. The 360 non-security hires will allow the department to create what is known in the military as a "training float"--a set number of employees that are assumed to be in training at any given time. One tool that State plans to use to recruit new workers is student loan repayments--the department has budgeted $7 million for that purpose in 2002.
• Using $273 million for two major information technology initiatives-putting full Internet access on every State Department employee's desktop and connecting all of the department's posts to a classified communications network.
• Devoting 25 percent, or $1.3 billion, of the administrative budget to embassy security, construction and maintenance. State officials plan to spend $151 million for perimeter security at embassies.
• Transferring some financial services jobs from Paris, Bangkok and Washington to Charleston, S.C., over the next two years.