WASHINGTON–Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s overhaul of the State Department is well underway as the department cuts waste, streamlines processes, and returns power to regional bureaus, embassies, and ambassadors, senior State Department officials detailed Monday.
Breitbart News and multiple other outlets attended a roundtable with the senior officials, who provided an update on the reorganization of the State Department after six months of work.
The efforts started after Rubio was sworn in and made it a priority to make the department more efficient, and by April, the officials had a “roadmap” for the shake-up, the implementation of which commenced last week. Rubio took into account feedback from senior officials and career state department employees, who gave over 650 comments to higher-ups.
As part of the reorganization, roughly 3,000 employees are leaving the State Department. More than half of the departures will be under one of two deferred resignation programs, and these employees are set to leave after September 30.
The reduction in force includes “1,107 Civil Servants and 246 Foreign Service employees with domestic assignments,” according to a document shared with reporters.
These reductions in force concern “certain non-core, duplicative, or redundant domestic offices and functions.”
During the roundtable officials put a heavy emphasis on streamlining processes. One noted that there are 730 domestic offices within the department, and they went office by office to see where they could consolidate functions.
For instance, another official noted that the department has three different sanctions offices, adding that they should be “synergized” throughout the department.
The official also zoomed in on the political affairs “family” or division of the department, which deals with regional affairs bureaus and diplomatic affairs. Yet regional bureaus that covered different regions existed within other “families” of the state department. As one example, the official noted there were two offices that covered East Asia Pacific affairs, creating a bureaucratic headache as to who had the final say on a matter.
The department is working to ensure “that regional coverage lives within the political affairs family” and that they are the authority on regional matters.
“And yes, there are economies of scale to be gained in certain functional issues, such as global health or global food security. Those make sense to perhaps have as part of the functional bureau,” the official added.
The first official emphasized that Rubio wants to return diplomatic power to posts and embassies, noting that during the Cold War, the State Department was predicated on regional bureaus and embassies. However, during the Clinton administration and subsequent administrations, many policy offices with overlapping purposes began to emerge in the department, focusing on “pet issues” and “liberal causes,” leading to intense bureaucracy, the official told reporters.
Both officials referenced the arduous clearance process, where, oftentimes, 40 or 50 people sign a document before it reaches the secretary of State. When asked by Breitbart News about the immediate results they are seeing from the reorganization, although it is still in progress, the second official stated that streamlining the clearance process has been an immediate priority.
One undersecretary has set a maximum of 12 clearances for a particular document before it reaches the undersecretary. The feedback from employees about the 12-clearance approval has been positive, the first official said, as information can flow up the chain at a faster pace.
The officials also discussed bringing emergency aid functions back to the State Department after the dismantling of USAID. The department will focus on building partnerships, “very targeted life-saving aid that’s supposed to be short-term,” and concentrate on aligning with the president’s agenda as opposed to “bloated international constructs” and the United Nations’ humanitarian goals, according to one official.
The first official emphasized that “this is the largest reorganization since the Cold War” for the State Department.
