State Department's Office of Inspector General, Foreign Service, Needs To Improve Its Internal Evaluation Process

In July 1971, three evaluation groups in the Department of State were merged under the Inspector General, Foreign Service (S/IG) to: (1) systematically evaluate the State's activities, missions, and posts; (2) help State attain its resource management goals by furnishing information, analyses, appraisals, and recommendations; (3) evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of policies and programs employed to attain objectives and goals; and (4) evaluate the allocation and use of resources, including personnel, needed to support U.S. policies and programs.

Prior to 1974, S/IG was not meeting its statutory mandate to inspect each diplomatic and consular post every 2 years. S/IG attributed the slippages mainly to a shortage in inspectors, but war or political conditions also caused deferrals of inspections. S/IG efforts were also hampered by requirements that posts be inspected at least biennially and that Foreign Service officers be assigned to perform this function. The fact that Foreign Service officers act as inspectors for temporary tours of 2 years and then are reassigned to activities which they may recently have evaluated has negative aspects. Evaluation of foreign service personnel is an operational function which should not be performed by internal review groups like S/IG. State's payment of special allowances to inspectors based on absences from their residences for more than 30 days was questioned.

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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