Fiscal Year 2021 Inspector General Statement on the Department of State’s Major Management and Performance Challenges

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 significant 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 often provides a unique window into common and emergent issues.

Throughout FY 2021, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continued to affect OIG’s operations, requiring that we adapt our programs and processes to ensure our critical functions continue. Nonetheless, we issued 100 reports in FY 2021. Based on these reports and our previous work, OIG identified the following major management and performance challenges facing the Department in FY 2021:

• Protection of people and facilities
• Management and 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

This document includes examples of reports and findings that illustrate these challenge areas. In addition to publicly available work, OIG issues a number of Sensitive But Unclassified² 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.

Continued attention to these management challenges 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 change.

^{1 The Reports Consolidation Act of 2000, § 3, Pub. L. 106-531 (amending 31 U.S.C. § 3516).}

^{2 Sensitive But Unclassified material is information that is not classified for national security reasons, but that warrants/requires administrative control and protection from public or other unauthorized disclosure for other reasons.}