Book Description

I am pleased to be here today to discuss our ongoing work on rightsizing the U.S. overseas presence. For our purposes, we define rightsizing as aligning the number and location of staff assigned to U.S. embassies1 with foreign policy priorities and security and other constraints. To follow up on our November 2001 report on the executive branch s efforts in this area,2 you asked us to determine what rightsizing actions may be feasible to reduce costs and security vulnerabilities while retaining effectiveness in meeting foreign policy objectives. We reviewed reports, including those of the Accountability Review Boards,3 the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel (OPAP),4 and a State Department-led interagency rightsizing committee,5 and we discussed overseas staffing issues with officials from the State Department, other U.S. agencies operating overseas, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is currently implementing the president s management initiative to rightsize U.S. embassies. We also performed fieldwork at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. We selected this embassy as a case study because it is a large embassy that has been the subject of substantial rightsizing discussions, including recommendations by the former ambassador to France to reduce the number of staff in.