The State Department is moving forward with a plan to eliminate or consolidate more than 300 of its offices and bureaus, according to documents provided to lawmakers and employees on Thursday, leading to a reduction of more than 3,400 employees and 45% of its structural entities.
The changes, outlined in the multiple documents obtained by Government Executive and Nextgov/FCW, will address “bureaucratic overgrowth” and streamline functions with overlapping responsibilities, the department said, though some reforms to bureau missions are also included in the reorganization. The plans presented Thursday offer more detail than those first laid out by State Secretary Marco Rubio in April, though the number of employee reductions was first reported by Government Executive earlier this month.
While State is eliminating a slew of offices across the department, it is reassigning much of the impacted functions elsewhere. The workforce cuts are from a baseline of staffing levels as of May 4, meaning any attrition that occurred prior to that date will not count toward the goal.
The layoffs will exempt passport and visa operations with Consular Affairs, as well as special agents in active law enforcement cases and regional staff assigned to a specific country desk. The cuts will only impact domestic staff, though both civil and foreign service personnel will be laid off, according to the documents.
“RIF plans have been carefully tailored, consistent with applicable law, to preserve core functions,” State said in a document prepared for Capitol Hill. “Reductions will principally affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities.”
This is where State’s cuts will take place, by division:
- The Economic Growth, Energy and Environment division, or the “E Family,” plans to RIF 198 employees and another 99 are leaving voluntarily. That will lead to a reduction of 42% of that team.
- The Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs division, or “F/J Family,” plans to RIF 386 employees and see another 145 depart voluntarily. That division will be slashed by 69%.
- The Management division, or “M Family,” plans to lay off 897 employees and let another 796 leave through deferred resignations. That will lead to a cut of around 15% of staff.
- The Political Affairs division, or “P Family,” plans to RIF 112 employees and shed another 162 through resignations. That will amount to cuts of about 14%.
- The Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, or “R Family,” plans to lay off 88 employees and see another 80 leave voluntarily. That amounts to a cut of about 22%.
- The State Secretary Marco Rubio’s office, or “S Family,” will lay off just 51 employees and another 189 have signed up to resign. About 12% of the office will be cut.
- The Arms Control and International Security division, or “T Family,” plans to RIF 141 employees and allow another 104 to leave voluntarily. That will lead to a reduction of about 22% of that team.
State plans to complete its implementation of the reorganization by July 1 and, as it makes changes, it will “communicate them to the workforce,” the department said in a “frequently asked questions” document. It has already incorporated feedback from both the workforce and Congress, the department said.
It reminded staff that their office disappearing from the organizational chart does not necessarily mean they will be laid off. Some employees will simply be reassigned. The department asked employees to ensure their personal contact information is up to date.
While foreign service officers will be impacted by the layoffs, the department said its human resources team will work with personnel whose next assignments have been eliminated to find new roles.
It was not immediately clear how the decision to proceed with the reorganization plan—and to send out RIF notices by July 1—will comply with a court-ordered injunction pausing State and 19 other agencies from carrying out those changes. State did not respond to a request for comment.
New structures
State will eliminate many of the offices in its Civilian Security, Human Rights and Democracy division, which the department said had become “prone to ideological capture and radicalism.”
Offices such as Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) and Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) will now fall under the undersecretary for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs.
DRL will take on a “leaner” portfolio, State said, that will reflect the administration’s “values-based diplomacy [based] in traditional Western conceptions of core freedoms.” One foreign service officer familiar with the office called the reprioritization a “substantial” change to the office’s mission. The overall division handling humanitarian and foreign assistance, that employee said, will be “completely decimated.”
A new Office of Security Affairs will be stood up inside the Bureau of International Organization Affairs—which develops U.S. policy with the United Nations—that would merge the bureau’s coverage of UN peacekeeping operations, sanctions and counterterrorism, one memo said.
That same memo detailed multiple other office consolidations. The European and Eurasian Affairs unit, for instance, will merge Russian and Caucus nations’ coverage into a new Office of Russian Affairs and the Caucuses, it says. And in the South and Central Asian Affairs office, the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts and the Special Representative for Afghan Reconstruction will be shuttered, that memo added. Their functions are expected to be moved into the Afghanistan Affairs Office.
A major restructuring of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security family “consolidates nearly all of the Department’s security-oriented programs into a new vertical focused on addressing contemporary security and military challenges,” the readout also said.
International narcotics and law enforcement will now be nested in that arms control family, and a pair of arms control and nonproliferation bureaus will merge into a single Bureau of Arms Control and Nonproliferation, it said.
A new Bureau of Political-Military Affairs office, dubbed the Office of State-Defense Exchange, will combine current political and military advisor offices. The Political-Military Affairs bureau works with the Defense Department to advance military and national security objectives.
The State Department has repeatedly said its reorganization will empower regional offices and streamline decision making. One foreign service officer said it was hard to see how that comes about.
“It doesn’t look any simpler, and they’re taking completely different functions and welding them together to create Frankenstein offices,” the employee said.
In a separate memo, a report to Congress on the structure of the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital policy argued that changes being made to the bureau will further enhance the State Department’s cybersecurity efforts. “The Secretary…has also considered interagency equities and concluded that the proposed moves further the broader interests of the United States and federal government,” it says. Politico first reported the planned reshuffling of the cyberspace unit.
There were bipartisan concerns about breaking up that cyber office, according to the summary of a meeting that Government Executive and Nextgov/FCW previously reported. The bureau’s work focused on digital freedom will be incorporated into the office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, an intelligence community office that protects the agency’s top secret networks and produces insights to inform diplomatic decisions, was shifted under a new Bureau of Emerging Threats, as reported earlier. That emerging threats office will focus on areas like cybersecurity and proliferating concerns about artificial intelligence.
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