Report Contents
This report is provided in accordance with the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000.1 Each year, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of State (Department) identifies the most serious management and performance challenges facing the Department and provides a brief assessment of the Department’s progress in addressing those challenges.
We assess progress primarily through our compliance process, which relates to individual and often targeted recommendations. Our oversight work, however, gives us unique visibility into the most significant challenges facing the Department. OIG identifies the following major management and performance challenges the Department faced in FY 2018:
- Protection of people and facilities
- Oversight of contracts, grants, and foreign assistance
- Information security and management
- Financial and property management
- Operating in contingency and critical environments
- Workforce management
- Promoting accountability through internal coordination and clear lines of authority
These challenges are based on a thorough review of our oversight work performed this year and in the past. We have included within this document examples of reports and findings that are particularly illustrative or noteworthy on certain points. In addition to publicly available work, OIG issues a number of Sensitive But Unclassified and Classified reports throughout the year. Many of the findings in those reports reinforce our assessment of these management challenges, particularly as they relate to protection of people and facilities and information security and management.
Although the specific challenges are unchanged from FY 2017, our focus on certain aspects of these challenges has shifted in FY 2018. For example, this year, as part of the challenge relating to oversight of contracts and grants, we have emphasized the Department’s oversight of construction contracts. A growing body of our work reveals ongoing concerns with the Department’s long-term, complex, and high value construction projects, and this is particularly true in critical and contingency environments. Although many of the deficiencies we identify are relevant to contract oversight generally, we focus on these construction contracts separately due to the particular financial and security risks they pose for the Department.
These challenges often overlap and reinforce one another. Protecting people and facilities is often a particular challenge in contingency and critical environments, and workforce management challenges are frequently found at the root of deficiencies related to contract and grant oversight. Likewise, weaknesses in organizational structure and lines of authority contribute to a range of concerns, including information security deficiencies and difficulties managing foreign assistance programs.
Continued attention to the management challenges identified in this report will improve the Department’s capacity to fulfill its mission while exhibiting good stewardship of public resources. OIG encourages the Department to consider ways that specific recommendations might be applied broadly to make systemic improvements that will result in meaningful and permanent change. We hope that this report, accompanied by the oversight work we perform throughout the year, assists the Department in its efforts to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its programs and operations.
1 The Reports Consolidation Act of 2000, § 3, Pub. L. 106-531 (amending 31 U.S.C. § 3516).