Export Promotion

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed personnel management issues at the International Trade Administration's (ITA) U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service (US&FCS), focusing on: (1) an update of its 1987 review; and (2) identifying new issues affecting services to U.S. businesses.

GAO found that: (1) since 1987, US&FCS has improved its personnel management system by clarifying its assignment, selection, and evaluation policies and by requiring more detailed documentation on personnel activities; (2) US&FCS appeared to have resolved morale problems identified in the 1987 review and anticipated further management improvements under its new director; (3) US&FCS still needed to limit its use of tour curtailments, since it could offer no justification for granting 4 of 25 curtailments occurring between April 1987 and July 1989; (4) to correct continuing problems with tour extension practices, the current US&FCS director approved a new tour length policy in October 1989; (5) since 1987, US&FCS has reduced the number of non-career limited appointments overseas, from 40 to 9 appointees, but has not completely eliminated its practice of selecting non-career personnel over career officers; (6) US&FCS and ITA still lacked guidelines for their personnel exchange program; (7) US&FCS could not justify its procedures for converting two limited employees to career status and selecting them over higher-ranking candidates; and (8) the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) did not have sufficient funding to comply with trade legislation requiring it to maintain commercial staff levels equivalent to US&FCS staff in South Korea.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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