12: Overseas Presence
A “Right-Sized” Overseas Presence Other Information:
THE PROBLEM • The U.S. overseas presence is costly, increasingly complex, and of growing security concern. U.S. national security
interests are best served by deploying the right number of people at the right posts with the right expertise. • Currently,
the principal mechanism to assess the rational deployment of U.S. government personnel overseas is the ambassador’s authority
to manage staffing at each particular post. We need to have a more systematic decision making process to create proper incentives
and procedures to manage U.S. government staff operating overseas. • No one U.S. government agency can determine with any
certainty the total number of U.S. government Executive Branch personnel under the authority of each ambassador and other
chiefs of mission. Estimates run as high as 60,000 with people representing over 30 agencies. There is no mechanism to assess
the overall rationale and effectiveness of where and how U.S. employees are deployed. • Moreover, as there is no common accounting
system that captures all costs, agencies do not know the true costs of sending staff to overseas posts. Agencies are not bearing
the full costs of sending their staffs abroad. • While Chiefs of Mission have legal authority to manage assignments of other
agencies to their embassies, in practice, this authority has not been used to significantly alter patterns of deployment of
U.S. government staff overseas. • Following the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, the Overseas Presence
Advisory Panel (OPAP) was formed to assess America’s overseas presence and to develop recommendations to make it better managed
and more effective. The OPAP report concluded that the distribution of U.S. government personnel overseas is shaped more by
historical legacy or bureaucratic inertia than by actual long-term foreign policy goals. It criticized staffing at overseas
posts for too often failing to match an embassy’s requirements, called the interagency coordination on overseas staffing poor
and inadequate, and found that decisions regarding the size and location of U.S. embassies, are "made on an apparently ad
hoc basis without adequate formal planning." As a result of these findings, the report recommended an interagency review process
to determine the size, shape, and goals of U.S. presence overseas. This present effort intends to follow through on the OPAP
recommendations and ensure that U.S. presence overseas is properly coordinated and managed. • As the bombings in Africa have
shown, every embassy in the world is a potential target from terrorist groups. To ensure that all U.S. government personnel
work in secure posts abroad, the Department of State has embarked on an expansive construction program for embassies and consulates.
The construction program is expected to require a commitment of approximately $15 billion over the next 10 years. This costly
program demands that staffing decisions underlying facility construction be based on a thorough understanding of U.S. government
needs in each country and a matching of staff with requisite skills and abilities to achieve mission goals. Faulty staff planning
means that the U.S. government may be building embassies larger or smaller than needed. • The average full-year cost to the
U.S. government of an American official at a post overseas ranges from post to post but can cost upwards of several hundred
thousand dollars a year, not including salary. The cost of new overseas positions can range up to $600,000 for certain agencies
in certain areas, including all support costs. Security and cost considerations demand that the overseas staffing process
be improved. The State Department estimates that the full-year cost is $339,100 on average to establish a new State Department
position overseas. THE EXPECTED RESULTS • Reconfigure U.S. government overseas staff allocation to the minimum necessary to
meet U.S. foreign policy goals. • Have a government-wide, comprehensive accounting of total overseas personnel costs and accurate
mission, budget, and staffing information. • Use staffing patterns to determine embassy construction needs. THE NEAR-TERM
RESULTS • Develop accurate staffing projections for new construction projects with planning levels out to 2010. • Integrate
"right-sizing" into the workforce plans of the State Department and other agencies as part of the 2003 budget process. • Improve
the process for establishing new U.S. government positions overseas. • Develop cost saving tools or models in such areas as:
management, hiring practices, decreasing post size, regional centers, revising the Mission Performance Planning process, increasing
overseas administrative efficiency, or relocating certain functions to the United States. • Improve cost accounting mechanisms
for overseas presence. • Establish new, and improved, mechanisms to better coordinate all U.S. government agency policies
relating to overseas presence.
Objective(s):
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