Posted: 1:35 pm EDT
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State/OIG released it inspection report of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and its constituent posts.  The OIG made 65 recommendations intended to improve Embassy Tokyo’s operations and programs.  Mission Japan is headed by Ambassador Caroline Kennedy who arrived in November 2013, and her DCM,  Jason P. Hyland who arrived in June 2014. Mr. Hyland’s predecessor is not named in the report. Prior to this inspection, US Mission Japan was last reviewed in early 2008, and a report was issued in June 2008 (link to that report at the bottom of this post).

US Embassy Japan from diplomacy.state.gov

Let’s start with the key findings:

 The Department of State has not addressed security problems, including vulnerabilities which the Office of Inspector General identified in previous inspection reports.

 The role and authorities of the Ambassador’s chief of staff are not clearly defined, leading to confusion among staff as to her level of authority, and her role in internal embassy communications.

 The embassy’s focus on daily reporting of political and economic developments comes at the expense of building a broad network of contacts and providing in-depth analysis for policy formulation.

 The embassy is not coordinating reporting and diplomatic engagement across the mission. Constituent posts in Sapporo, Nagoya and Osaka-Kobe need to be brought up to the high standards set by posts in Fukuoka and Naha.

 The level of U.S. direct-hire staffing in the embassy’s political, economic, and consular sections is greater than workload warrants.

 The public affairs section faces major management challenges, but has begun to focus on educational exchanges and staffing adjustments to cope with the high visitor load and public outreach needs.

 American Presence Post Nagoya should cease offering routine consular services; consular operations in Fukuoka and Sapporo are inefficient.

 Although the embassy’s management section has made significant progress on cost containment, senior managers should pay greater attention to management controls over travel and official residence allowances.

 Office of Inspector General inspectors identified $122,665 in cost savings and $2,331,787 in funds put to better use during the inspection.

Overview of the mission:

Mission Japan is one of the U.S. Department of State’s (Department) most important missions in terms of its size and the U.S. interests for which it is responsible. The mission includes 13 U.S. Government agencies and 5 constituent posts: consulates general in Osaka-Kobe and Naha, consulates in Sapporo and Fukuoka, and an American Presence Post1 in Nagoya. The mission also includes the Foreign Service Institute language school in Yokohama. Headquarters of U.S. Forces Japan are located nearby at Yokota Air Base, and various U.S. military commands are located throughout the mainland and on Okinawa. The mission has 272 U.S. direct-hire employees and total employment of 727. In FY 2014, total funding for the mission, including other agencies, was $93.6 million. U.S. direct-hire employees were receiving a 25- to 35-percent cost-of-living allowance based on location at the time of the inspection.

Now, the good news:

• Good Scores for Ethics | The Ambassador has made clear to the bureau’s executive office, the management officers at Embassy Tokyo, and her front office staff that she wants all her activities to be conducted in accordance with U.S. Government regulations. This was borne out by the fact that the highest score she received from staff members who completed a personal questionnaire was for her ethical behavior.

• Hague Convention Accession | Japan is second only to Mexico in the number of children abducted from the United States. Japan’s accession to The Hague Convention on International Parental Child Abduction in 2014 was a significant development, due in no small part to Embassy Tokyo’s efforts to encourage Japan to join.

• EFM Employment | A de facto work agreement with the Government of Japan allows family members to apply for work permits with strict rules governing employment. Twenty-seven eligible family members are employed inside the mission, and 34 eligible family members are employed outside the mission, mostly as English teachers.

• RSO:  The Tokyo regional security office is responsible for the security and emergency preparedness of a large geographically dispersed diplomatic mission. In discussions and interviews with embassy staff members, the OIG team was told repeatedly that the regional security office is responsive to their needs. Accomplishments of the senior regional security officer include reinvigorating the law enforcement working group, updating and drafting missing or outdated security policies, and implementing modifications to the local guard contract that save the Department approximately $230,000 annually. The regional security office staff uniformly describes the senior regional security officer as a good mentor and communicator.

And the not so good news, oh where do we start?

• Leadership | A non-career Ambassador with wide experience in nongovernmental and publishing industries leads Embassy Tokyo. She sees the strengthening of mutual understanding between the Japanese and the American people and the deepening of the security alliance as her prime responsibilities. The Ambassador does not have extensive experience leading and managing an institution the size of the U.S. Mission to Japan. She relies upon two key senior staff members—her non-career chief of staff and a career Senior Foreign Service deputy chief of mission (DCM)—to make sure that Embassy Tokyo and its constituent posts receive the resources and guidance they need to conduct day-to-day operations. The chief of staff, who has extensive experience in public relations and has worked with the Ambassador over a period of years, organizes special projects for the Ambassador, coordinates functions within the embassy, and oversees embassy staff interactions with the Ambassador. The DCM, who arrived in Tokyo 6 months before the start of the onsite inspection process, focuses on internal management of the embassy and coordination with the constituent posts.
• Communication Between the Front Office and Embassy Sections Needs Improvement.
• High Visibility Ambassador Puts a Strain on Some Embassy Elements
• Role of Chief of Staff Needs Refinement
• The Deputy Chief of Mission Should be More Proactive in Exercising Leadership

The leadership section does not include discussion on training, mentoring, and professional development of First and Second Tour (FAST) officers, or mission morale. The report says that “four of seven officers in the public affairs section assigned to Tokyo have left post before their tour end date.”  There’s a term for that; it’s called curtailment.  A non-career chief of staff, a PR person, who has a large sway in the functioning of this embassy is not named in this report.  And just before the arrival of the inspectors, the front office apparently had made some headway on improving communication by holding a town hall meeting to unveil the revised memo outlining the activities the Ambassador would undertake. The report is not clear if this is the ambassador’s first town hall meeting with embassy staff.

Political Section:

• Minister Counselor Positions Under-Ranked
• Economic Section Has Too Many Supervisors
• Economic Section Portfolios Organized Poorly
• Excess Staff in the Political and Economic Sections
• Law Enforcement Working Group Lacks Political Context

Econ Section

• Reporting and Advocacy Needed on Structural Reform
• Economic Section Not Keeping Proper Records and Files

• Embassy Tokyo does not have a current records management policy and does not enforce Department and Federal regulations on records management.

• The economic section’s reporting relies heavily on media sources. On some policy developments, the OIG team found that embassy reporting did not add value to more timely reporting by the international press. Reporting was mostly single-sourced and did not evidence a range of contacts among Japanese business leaders, legislators or staff, political parties, academia, or other economic leaders or decision makers, as intended by 2 FAM 113.1 c (10) and (11).

Consular Section

• Consular Officer Staffing Is Excessive
• No Coordination of Consular Social Media
• Inefficient Consular Operations in Fukuoka and Sapporo

Note that citizens of some countries including Japan, who are traveling to the U.S. for 90 days less for business or tourism may not need a visa as they are eligible for the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). This report says that Tokyo’s consular section, with 14 officers, has more officer positions than other consular operations of similar workload, with a high proportion of managers to entry-level officers.

Management Section:

• Inconsistencies in Billing Methods Creates Confusion
• Cashiering Violation and Fiscal Irregularity
• Class B Cashier’s Cash Advance is Excessive
• Salaries Inappropriately Paid Directly to Official Residence Expense Staff (this is a pretty common subject in OIG reports)
• Position Descriptions Are Inaccurate
• Delays in Processing Within-Grade Increases
• In-House Post Language Program Is Not Cost Effective
• No In-House Equal Employment Opportunity Training Provided to Staff
• Allegations of Sexual Harassment Not Reported to the Office of Civil Rights
• Unauthorized Use of Motor Pool Shuttle Services
• Living Quarters Allowance Not in Compliance with the Foreign Affairs Manual
• No Emergency Backup Generators at Some Constituent Posts
• The Department’s Office of Fire Safety conducted visits in 2014. The report identified 83 deficiencies of which the mission has corrected 53.
• Locally Developed Software Applications Not in Compliance
• Emergency Communication Does Not Meet Department Standards
• No Logs of Network Maintenance
• Premium Class Train Travel Policy Does Not Comply with Department Regulations
• Extra Travel Costs Inappropriately Approved for Using Indirect Routes
• USCG Naha: Inappropriate Use of Official Residence Expense Funds Instead of Representation Funds

Public Affairs

The OIG report says that in the past 8 months, four of seven officers in the public affairs section assigned to Tokyo have left post before their tour end date. That’s called curtailment. Unless they were all medevaced.

• Embassy’s 11-person Media Analysis and Translation Team Lacks a Clear Mandate | Without a survey of the MATT’s customers, the embassy cannot confirm who—if anyone—is reading its products or justify the $1.25-million annual cost of operating the MATT.
• Social Media Lacks Coordination| Several LE staff members work separately with social media, resulting in a multiplicity of uncoordinated messages
• Grants Management Not in Compliance
• No Public Diplomacy Strategy
• The public affairs section was told to take a 26-percent cut. This reduced the public diplomacy allotment from $11.5 million in FY 2011 to $8.6 million in FY 2012. Even at that reduced rate, Mission Japan’s public affairs budget was still the largest in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. As a result of these budget cuts, the public affairs section eliminated 17 LE staff positions. The public affairs section allocated 68 percent of its FY 2014 budget of $8.5 million to LE staff salaries. According to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, this is high by world standards. […]The Ambassador selected the country public affairs officer, who arrived in Tokyo in August 2014, to stabilize the public affairs section, end the curtailments, define LE staff duties in order to clarify the new distribution of duties following the 2012 staff cuts, bring transparency to personnel decisions, and get the entire staff’s commitment to move forward. Since the public affairs officer’s arrival, the public affairs section has had considerable success, particularly with programs on educational exchange and women’s issues

A few more items with notable details extracted from the report:

Commercial Email Usage |  In the course of its inspection, OIG received reports concerning embassy staff use of private email accounts to conduct official business. On the basis of these reports, OIG’s Office of Evaluations and Special Projects conducted a review and confirmed that senior embassy staff, including the Ambassador, used personal email accounts to send and receive messages containing official business.

Employee Evaluation Reports do not Reflect Demonstrated Weaknesses | The OIG team reviewed a range of Department employee evaluations written by managers at the U.S. Mission to Japan. They found several examples of evaluations that did not reveal any indication of serious weaknesses, even though the rated officers had required in-depth management and or discipline by their supervisors and had absorbed time and resources from senior embassy officers. The DCM, having been at post only 6 months, has not yet produced employee evaluations. The inspectors advised him to make clear to rating officers that employee evaluations must present an accurate record of each staff member’s strengths and a realistic area for improvement.

Yokohama Language Program Cost-Benefit Analysis Lacking | To provide Japanese-language instruction in Yokohama, it costs the Department an estimated $2.3 million per year. The total cost of operating the school, factoring out fixed expenses, such as leasing residences for the students, post allowance, education allowance, the school director’s salary and benefits, and other sunk costs, is $1 million per year. This translates into a per-student cost of from $83,583 to $200,599 for a student body of from 5 to 12 students. The Department could be incurring higher costs for providing language services.

No Justification for Paying Post Allowance to Family Member Appointees | Worldwide, Embassies London and Tokyo are the only two authorized to pay post allowance to family member appointees. In 2001, the Department granted them an exception on the basis of their inability to recruit individuals for family member positions because of lower salaries and wages, in accordance with 3 FAM 8218.1 c. In Japan, these adverse employment conditions no longer exist. Except for security escort positions, the embassy has had no difficulty filling family member positions. It also has been able to fill some of its LE staff vacancies with eligible family members when they meet all position requirements. The cost impact to the embassy of providing the post allowance to nine full-time family members is $59,190, annually.

Consulate General Naha Not Benefiting from Zero Cost Leasing Offer | In February 2010, the Open Source Center located on the U.S. Army’s Torii Station offered four Government-owned houses located on Kadena Air Base to Consulate General Naha at zero leasing costs. Consulate General Naha has not fully considered this offer. The OIG team estimates accepting the Open Source Center’s offer would save leasing costs of $110,665 per year. The embassy would continue to fund utility and make-ready costs. In Naha, U.S. direct hires already use base services, including the commissary, Post Exchange, and other support services. U.S. direct-hire dependents attend Department of Defense schools. According to 15 FAM 228 b, housing selection should achieve maximum cost benefit to the U.S. Government, and every effort should be made to lease appropriate housing with terms that reflect the likelihood of the housing unit remaining in posts inventory, with lease terms of 5 years or more whenever appropriate.

Private Domestic Staff Inappropriately Housed in U.S. Government-Owned Facility | The embassy continues to house private domestic staff of U.S. direct-hire officers in a separate U.S. Government-owned facility (the former U.S. Marine Dormitory) despite a 2008 Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion cautioning that the legality of operating living quarters for private domestic servants of U.S. Government employees on U.S. Government premises is highly doubtful under Federal appropriations/employment law. The presence of such facilities on U.S. Government-controlled real property also raises liability issues under employment law and tort law. The embassy raised concerns about prior fraudulent domestic staff employment contracts, use of appropriated funds to maintain the facility and collection of utilities reimbursements through the employees association as a probable violation of appropriation law. At the time of inspection, 42 domestic staff resided in the 31-room U.S. Government-owned building designated for domestic staff. According to 15 FAM 244, post personnel may house full-time domestic staff in their own U.S. Government-provided quarters if space is available and approved by the regional security officer. The estimated cost of maintaining the facility is $60,000 per year.

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Related items:

OIG_ISP-i-15-35a JAPAN Aug 25, 2015

OIG – U.S. Embassy Tokyo, Japan and Constituent Posts June 2008