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GAO-21-457PR 1 (2021-05-19)

handle is hein.gao/gaolsj0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 1Oo_ U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE A Century of Non-Partisan Fact-Based Work 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 May 19, 2021 The Honorable Antony J. Blinken Secretary of State U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20520 Priority Open Recommendations: Department of State Dear Mr. Secretary: The purpose of this letter is to provide an update on the overall status of the U.S. Department of State's implementation of GAO's recommendations and to call your personal attention to areas where open recommendations should be given high priority.1 In November 2020, we reported that on a government-wide basis, 77 percent of our recommendations made 4 years ago were implemented.2 State's recommendation implementation rate was 79 percent. As of April 2021, State had 89 open recommendations.3 Fully implementing these open recommendations could significantly improve agency operations. Since our April 2020 letter, State has implemented three of our 12 open priority recommendations. We believe that these efforts have improved State's embassy construction planning efforts, by carrying out an organizational review and workforce assessment for strategic building goals and priorities; and improved State's implementation of agency reform efforts by clearly communicating the department's decision to implement all of its unimplemented reform projects, and by establishing a working group to manage the implementation of reform efforts. Fully implementing all of our open priority recommendations would further improve State's security assistance vetting process; assistance-related data quality; and workforce, building, and operations management. State has nine priority recommendations remaining from those we identified in the 2020 letter. We ask your continued attention to the remaining priority recommendations. We are also adding two new recommendations related to improving workforce management and cybersecurity, bringing the total number of priority recommendations to 11. (See enclosure for the list of recommendations). State's 11 open priority recommendations fall into the following six major areas. 1Priority recommendations are those that GAO believes warrant priority attention from heads of key departments or agencies. They are highlighted because, upon implementation, they may significantly improve government operation, for example, by realizing large dollar savings; eliminating mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or making progress toward addressing a high-risk or duplication issue. 2GAO, Performance and Accountability Report: Fiscal Year 2020, GAO-20-4-SP (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 16, 2020). 3Sensitive and classified recommendations are tracked separately. GAO-21-457PR State Priority Recommendations Page 1

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