State’s Employee Transfer Process Is Inefficient, Cumbersome, and Costly

State’s process for transferring employees overseas is inefficient, cumbersome, and costly. It requires employees to work with personnel in at least 12 bureaus and offices and involves over 150 support staff. State has known for years that its process for transferring employees and their households overseas was cumbersome and inefficient. State makes very limited use of “door-to-door” channels to contract with a single freight forwarder for shipping an employee’s household effects—a practice used throughout the private sector and seen as more cost-effective than using multiple vendors for the various segments of the same move. Another company that we visited and that asked for anonymity has for years had one point of contact for its employees assigned internationally. Adopting One-Stop Shopping and Centralized Program Administration

If State implemented one-stop shopping (one focal point for the employee) and centralized program administration, it could achieve benefits such as improved quality of services for employees and their families, reduced time required for employees to complete the process, and possibly lower costs resulting from fewer staff required to administer the program. Officials in State’s Bureau of Administration endorsed the development of an integrated system for tracking and coordinating the transfer process. Potential Cost Reductions

Applying best practices to State’s transfer process could result in significant cost reductions. The total that could be achieved is dependent on a number of factors, including (1) the personnel and other resources State chooses to redeploy as they are freed up in connection with a more streamlined transfer process; (2) the number of routes where the door-to-door method of shipping household effects is found to provide the best combination of overall cost-effectiveness, accountability and control, and quality of service; (3) the extent to which changes resulting from State’s Logistics Reengineering Project affect household effect shipment costs; and (4) the parts of the transfer process State decides to outsource. Although these and other variables preclude making precise projections, we believe that the potential cost reductions could total millions of dollars annually, based on (1) our limited analysis of the indirect costs associated with certain portions of State’s current process, (2) documented direct cost savings resulting from use of the door-to-door method on a pilot basis, (3) the experiences of companies and organizations that we visited as part of our benchmarking exercise, and (4) State’s own studies. Employee transfer requirements are much the same in the public and private sector, essentially focusing on ensuring that employees and their families are successfully transferred to their new overseas assignments.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO discussed: (1) the Department of State's process for transferring employees and their household effects overseas; and (2) opportunities for State to apply the best practices that private-sector and other government organizations use to complete overseas transfers.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) GAO's comparison of State's process for transferring employees and their household goods overseas to the processes of other public- and private-sector organizations suggests that State's procedures are overly cumbersome and inefficient; (2) State's employee transfer process has remained essentially unchanged for years and involves at least 12 agency bureaus and offices, over 150 support staff, and numerous administrative forms; (3) State employees transferring overseas are confronted with a myriad of steps and handoffs requiring individual transactions with multiple offices; (4) no single office within the Department is held accountable for ensuring the timely and successful transfer of employees and their families; (5) similarly, employees' household shipments are typically channeled through a maze of offices and contractors, resulting in unnecessary costs; (6) the Department of State has an opportunity to significantly streamline its employee transfer process, enabling it to provide better services to its employees and to reduce costs; (7) leading U.S. companies and other organizations have achieved these benefits by implementing a number of best practices, such as: (a) providing one point of contact for assistance to the employee, a method known as one-stop shopping; (b) centralizing the administration of transfers under one organizational unit and integrating various functions into that unit; (c) developing an integrated information system for tracking and coordinating transfers; (d) contracting with one freight forwarder to ship an employee's household effects, rather than using multiple vendors for the various segments of the same move; and (e) outsourcing various parts of the transfer process; (8) although GAO was unable to develop precise cost reduction estimates for implementing these best practices, several organizations indicated that they were able to achieve substantial cost savings by doing so; (9) in addition, GAO analyses of certain cost data and other information available at State, including some of State's own studies, indicate the potential for achieving similar cost reductions for the Department; and (10) for these and other reasons, GAO believes that the potential cost reductions could total millions of dollars annually.