Travel Advisories

State Needs Better Practices for Informing Americans of Dangers Overseas Gao ID: NSIAD-91-249 August 28, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of State's policies and procedures for issuing travel advisories and notices of potential dangers to overseas travellers.

GAO found that: (1) State lacked official written policies and procedures on issuing travel advisories and notices, especially those mentioning crime conditions; (2) even though State's guidance to overseas posts mentioned crime as a factor in determining the need for issuing a travel advisory, State did not consistently report information on crime conditions in foreign countries to American citizens; (3) because of general, limited, or misleading information, some advisories and notices did not appropriately warn travellers of potential dangers; (4) as a result of the GAO review, State stated that travel notices would receive the same distribution as travel advisories and that it would put travel notices on its recorded message system; and (5) State officials indicated that a system designed to inform the general public on security and crime information would be operational by October 1, 1991.

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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